Released: October 09, 2009

Health-care tug of war puts patients in the middle

Source: Amy Goldstein, Washington Post (Free Registration)

One February morning, a courier arrived at the front desk of Bayonne Medical Center, trying to get to a patient’s bedside. His mission: to deliver a letter from New Jersey’s dominant health insurer warning that the patient would face a huge hospital bill if he did not leave right away.

Hospital security guards stopped the courier—and 13 others who came soon after—before they reached patients’ rooms. But then came the faxes and, after that, the letters mailed to patients’ doctors and homes. Told that her health plan would not pay for her to stay in the hospital, a 35-year-old social worker named Lisa with a severe lung infection was so unnerved that, tethered to an IV pole dripping antibiotics into her arm, she began to pack her gym bag before a staff member coaxed her back into bed.

The hardball tactics being used to pry patients from their sickbeds illustrate the colliding financial interests that pervade U.S. health care. It is a tug of war over where patients are treated, who decides how much care they receive and—fundamentally—which parts of the health-care industry gain or lose when people become ill.

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