Missing details when toting up the cost of emergency care. The ironies of Polis' Office of Saving People Money on Healthcare. Climate anxiety and the media's role?
Some missing details on the cost of emergency care ...
If you are like me, the author of the Sun article below, or many other people who have ever once had occasion to take a child to the ER (or yourself), you've probably needed a follow up visit for the heart attack that the bill's arrival brought on.
I don't disagree with the article that the reasons covered contribute to the cost of ER bills, but I disagree with the fact that this article is an exhaustive look. As you might have come to expect, there are several things missing from this Sun article which I think are worth mentioning.
Part of it is hinted at in the quote from the article itself:
"Subsidies for those who buy insurance themselves have also increased and expanded, as have programs to help people pay out-of-pocket costs like deductibles."
Of course subsidies raise costs. When someone else is paying, why not have the steak? When the gov't chips in, why not say, "yeah, let's get that extra test regardless of price or likelihood of it leading to a diagnosis, better safe than sorry right?"
But I think that it goes beyond just government provided subsidies. It goes to things like what you can glean from the Next interview with Denver Health's CEO linked second below. When you and I and everyone else who have insurance need to help pay for the emergency care visits of those who can't pay, it goes up.
After all, those hospitals can't and won't eat those costs just to be nice, particularly (as covered in the interview) the need keeps rising. Money doesn't grow on trees.
It also rises because of fees.
--Fees hospitals put on: see a previous article by the Sun which details provider fees linked third below and a response by the Colorado Hostpial Association linked fourth
--And fees the government puts on: see the Complete Colorado article 5th below about Colorado's "Bed Tax" for people lucky enough to stay overnight in a hospital, and the ironically-titled Healthcare Affordability and Sustainability Fee linked sixth
Of which only the first above are mentioned in the Sun article (of course).
Our healthcare system is complicated and doesn't work well for a variety of reasons. When we go to totty them up, we need to recall that it isn't just insurers and hospitals that keep prices high.
Hospitals are cleaning up to be sure, but the answer isn't that simple. We are where we are as a result of many choices and we need to reckon with those other choices just as much as we do with what hospitals are up to.
https://coloradosun.com/2024/01/19/medical-health-care-costs-colorado/
https://coloradosun.com/2023/03/01/colorado-hospital-facility-fees-prices/
https://cha.com/hospital-provider-fee/
https://pagetwo.completecolorado.com/2016/05/06/colorados-hospital-provider-charge-a-tax-masquerading-as-a-fee/
https://hcpf.colorado.gov/healthcare-affordability-and-sustainability-fee
Related:
Some other missing context.
The other ironically titled department housed in Polis' executive branch? The Office of Saving People Money on Health Care (see the first link).
I say ironic for two reasons. One is because I don't think that they're actually saving anyone anything.
And two, we pay our lieutenant governor two salaries. One to be, you know, the LT. The second to run this office.
So we pay two salaries to save us money. Only in government could you say things like this with a straight face.
Oh, and it's too bad they left transparency out of the title. That would have given me three reasons to call it ironic. The Colorado Dems have worked to block efforts at transparency in this office and any audit thereof.
See the second link.
https://ltgovernor.colorado.gov/programs/office-of-saving-people-money-on-health-care
https://www.coloradopolitics.com/hot-sheet/senate-republicans-question-extra-pay-for-lieutenant-governors-second-job/article_92e47d8a-608f-11e9-8e46-db2858499078.html
Climate Anxiety ...
Let me start with a quote from the CPR article linked below (link left intact):
"And she’s not alone. According to one 2021 global study, over 59 percent of young adults said they were 'very or extremely worried' about climate change and more than 45 percent said their feelings about climate change negatively affected their daily life and functioning. The study surveyed 10,000 people across the world, aged 16-25."
Without delving into climate change and the reality/degree of same, I have to say that I am not at all surprised.
I'm not surprised that young ones are afraid of it (regardless of the actual threat) because of two things I've posted about in the past.
--Human beings are terrible about judging relative amounts of risk
--The availability heuristic (see the second link below if context is needed) make us especially vulnerable to (with regard to threats) considering those things which we see regularly and ignoring things that are not "close to hand" mentally.
Small wonder then that young folks are starting to have climate anxiety. They are immersed from a young age in talk of climate change. How could you not be afraid if everywhere you look you're told that climate change is happening, it's deadly, and it's at play even in the month to month weather.**
By way of comparison, I put a link from "Our World In Data" which lists their 12 key metrics to understand our world.
Look through the list. How many of those things on the list are an actual threat. Right now. Today.
How much better could lives be on this planet, for us all, if we took half of the money we're dumping into renewables and put it into child hunger, literacy, improved water sources and sanitation.
Instead, we are taking it and putting it into climate which (may) kill lots of people later.
We are teaching our young ones to be afraid of something far off and ignoring the here and now. We are, with climate anxiety, just now beginning to reap the rewards of this sowing.
**I would also say that you can fairly and without loss of validity generalize this to school shootings as well.
https://www.cpr.org/2024/01/24/butterfly-affect-climate-change-anxiety/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic
https://ourworldindata.org/12-key-metrics
Related:
The Next segment linked below has it that beliefs about climate change are great predictors of how one votes.
My guess is that they would be great predictors of the political lean of one's media choices, and for the same reason as in the post above.
If you are worried about climate, watch left-leaning news, you'll likely be made even more so because we learn to fear the dangers that are mentally close at hand.
In the same way that people worry about a terrorist attack in their city much more than they fear the candy bars and sedentary lifestyle causing a heart attack, when you are awash in stories about climate change, you'll see that as an immediate, bigger threat than other, actual threats.