Excessive charges contribute to expense

Your Voice

By: Letters to the Editor | Hickory Daily Record
Published: October 03, 2009

This is in response to the letter from a hospital employee published on Sept. 29 regarding spending millions of dollars to keep a person alive during their last few weeks of life.

As I reread this letter a couple of thoughts came to mind. The first is how is it possible for any hospital to incur millions of dollars of expenses to treat a patient in just a few weeks? This is a perfect example of the overcharging done by hospitals, and it should be thoroughly investigated.

A major contributing factor to high health-care costs are the excessive charges imposed by hospitals.

Another thought was how can anyone place a dollar value on a human life? We do not need people in the health-care system making decisions on who should receive treatment and who should be left to die. Voluntary assisted suicides and living wills can solve many problems. But for everyone else the objective should be to keep the person alive as long as possible.

Everyone should be entitled to receive the best care and treatment available regardless of the cost or the age and personal status of the individual.

William Hynson
Hickory

Medicare compounding economic problems

North Carolina Medicaid is compounding this state's economic woes. Thousands of nurse aides will have their wages reduced and some lose their jobs in the coming weeks, while we can expect to see more elderly and disabled people flooding our hospital emergency rooms, increased nursing home admissions and death certificates issued.

Medicaid will pay for the ER visits and nursing home stays. Home care agencies will be laying off their administrative staffs, reducing wages and some totally closing. Unemployment claims will rise.

Those affected will rise up and express their anger to their legislators who passed a budget that called for 3-percent reductions in home care rates.

Finally, on the afternoon of Sept. 30, Medicaid officially posted on its Web site that Medicaid home care providers would be cut upward to nearly 6 percent that night at midnight.

The margins have been so thin for these services that reducing wages to caregivers is the only alternative agencies have. State law requires that employers give employees a 24-hour notice before reducing their pay.

Should not Medicaid be held to at least similar standard? This illustrates the current Medicaid administration's total disrespect and understanding of its providers.

Stephen Smith
Whiteville