From the NEW YORK TIMES:
Hospital patients waiting in an emergency room or convalescing after surgery are being confronted by an unexpected visitor: a debt collector at bedside.
This and other aggressive tactics by one of the nation’s largest collectors of medical debts, Accretive Health, were revealed on Tuesday by the Minnesota attorney general, raising concerns that such practices have become common at hospitals across the country.
The tactics, like embedding debt collectors as employees in emergency rooms and demanding that patients pay before receiving treatment, were outlined in hundreds of company documents released by the attorney general. And they cast a spotlight on the increasingly desperate strategies among hospitals to recoup payments as their unpaid debts mount…
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EDITOR: For how long must our nation suffer from a system based upon employee funded health care that grew out of an effort to avoid wage price controls in during the Second World War with its bloated health care costs and dysfunctional administration?
All we need to do is adopt “Medicare for everyone” and fund it through a value added tax. US exports would soar once employers did not have to bear this heavy health care costs. The percentage of Gross Domestic Product devoted to health care would shrink almost overnight from 18% to say 12%, provided 6% for investment, education and for reducing the national debt among other benefits.
