Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 30, 1990 TAG: 9007020161
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The limits on Medicaid spending are an attempt by government to control the ridiculous overcharging of hospitals. If government and private insurance allowed this spending to go unchecked, the hospitals would charge ever-increasing rates.
The price of medical care wasn't so outrageous until government began subsidizing it. Only recently, with the diagnosis-related groups, has the government begun to make up for the mess it started in the 1930s. The DRG situation isn't perfect, but it's a start.
Roanoke Memorial may be non-profit, but are the companies they order from so charitable? Not when they charge $25-plus for a one-liter bottle of sterile water.
RMH is supplied by its own medical-supply companies. Who do you think profits from this? Not the indigent who are turned away from necessary, even life-saving surgeries and procedures.
If the legislative branch of our government has failed the consumers in this matter, perhaps the judicial branch will wake up and let the so-called non-profit hospitals know that we will no longer be fooled into believing that they are losing money by providing care to the poor. I have faith that no court in this country is ignorant enough to be bilked into awarding the hospitals any more of our tax dollars.
As a registered nurse I am sorry to write this, but as a taxpayer, I feel no less than obligated. Your readers should get an itemized bill from their last hopsital stay. Perhaps that will shock them into calling their legislators, and maybe the responsibility will be where it belongs.
MARGARET KELSO\ ROANOKE
by CNB