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A blood test can cost from $10 to $10,000 in Calif. hospitals, according to a study.

Imagine walking into a hospital and being charged more than $10,000 for a blood test to check your cholesterol level. Imagine then going to another hospital in the same state and being charged $10 for the same test.

That’s what a team led by a researcher at the University of California at San Francisco found when it looked at the prices California hospitals charge for 10 common blood tests.

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LOS ANGELES — In the little office where they ran the scam, a cellphone would ring on Sonia Bonilla’s desk. That was the sound of good news: Somebody had found them a patient.

When Bonilla answered the phone, one of the scam’s professional “patient recruiters” would read off the personal data of a senior citizen. Name. DOB. Medicare ID number. Bonilla would hang up and call Medicare, the enormous federal health-insurance program for those over 65.

She asked a single question: Had the government ever bought this patient a power wheelchair?

No? Then the scam was off and running.

“If they did not have one, they would be taken to the doctor, so the doctor could prescribe a chair for them,” Bonilla recalled. On a log sheet, Bonilla would make a note that the recruiter was owed an $800 finder’s fee. “They were paid for each chair.”

This summer, in a Los Angeles courtroom, Bonilla described the workings of a peculiar fraud scheme that — starting in the mid-1990s — became one of the great success stories in American crime.

The sucker in this scheme was the U.S. government. That wasn’t the peculiar part.

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Originally posted by 1kiki:
I thought it was your first commandant.

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Originally posted by Geezer:

No. Col. Klink was my first Commandant.

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Originally posted by ElvisChrist:


Sounds like a couple great examples of why we need stronger regulations of the medical field.

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Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
From what I have heard anecdotally (before OC) about your system is that it's overly reliant on expensive, largely unnecessary testing. In the end it becomes about money making and profits, which I dont think health care, nor prisons, nor public transport nor a whole lot of other industries, should be about.

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Originally posted by ElvisChrist:

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Originally posted by Geezer:

No. Col. Klink was my first Commandant.

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spoken like a good little Nazi.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Yea, the reason why healthcare costs so much is because of these nice little "free enterprise" units running a fraud... and that is somehow the gummint's fault?

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Also interesting (but not unexpected) that you automatically conflate free enterprise with fraud.

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Also interesting (but not unexpected) that you automatically conflate free enterprise with fraud.

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No, unfortunately it manages to do that all by itself. Gaming the system has been a major profit center since the days of the robber barons.

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Originally posted by Wishimay:
Whelp, today I went to my gyno and had my contraceptive device removed. (you'll just have to get over the TMI ) I'M FREE FROM PLASTIC SHIT SHOVED UP MY HOO-HAA!!!

Ten years I've been seeing this bastard. (today he was slightly drunk, btw, and last time I heard him say -through the paper thin walls- "Let me get rid of this damn patient next door and I can call you back" )

We've been lucky enough to have the same insurance for seven years of it. I sign in and the girl at front says "We may not be able to take your insurance because we've had something change LAST WEEK and two of the three things on your card we don't take anymore." Ten minutes later she comes out and says that ONE of them still counted, so it was OK.

THEY can't tell you how much you owe because they are so covered in paperwork they can't see their own nose.

PATIENTS need to start posting the prices of procedures and services somewhere. A couple states have forced hospitals to post non-insurance pay-up-front costs, and that needs to be in ALL states. Most hospitals don't want you to know that they charge (in my case) $26 for ONE dose of children's ibuprofen. They don't want you to know that surgery costs go up a grand every time they want to add a wing or change the flooring. They have it good. You have to MAKE them do these things, and I doubt our pussified media has the stones to make it happen...

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