How To Charge 546 Dollars for Six Liters of Salt Water.:.New York Times

[Stuart G]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/27/health/exploring-salines-secret-costs.html?_r=0


By NINA BERNSTEIN

Published: August 25, 2013


It is one of the most common components of emergency medicine: an intravenous bag of sterile saltwater. Luckily for anyone who has ever needed an IV bag to replenish lost fluids or to receive medication, it is also one of the least expensive. The average manufacturer’s price, according to government data, has fluctuated in recent years from 44 cents to $1.

Yet there is nothing either cheap or simple about its ultimate cost, as I learned when I tried to trace the commercial path of IV bags from the factory to the veins of more than 100 patients struck by a May 2012 outbreak of food poisoning in upstate New York.

Yet there is nothing either cheap or simple about its ultimate cost, as I learned when I tried to trace the commercial path of IV bags from the factory to the veins of more than 100 patients struck by a May 2012 outbreak of food poisoning in upstate New York.

Some of the patients’ bills would later include markups of 100 to 200 times the manufacturer’s price, not counting separate charges for “IV administration.” And on other bills, a bundled charge for “IV therapy” was almost 1,000 times the official cost of the solution.

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This is incredible read, and in two pages, we are shown exactly why we need single payer health insurance in the United States right now...(well worth the time)

[Hydra]

1. It's obscene that healthcare is allowed to be for profit

There are some services you just don't want someone trying to make money off you.

[tecelote]

5. Healthcare and prisons.

[Hydra]

6. War, spying, law enforcement, emergency response...

[riverwalker]

2. great article

I had a lady once ask me "what is in that IV?" I told her salt water and she asked me "why salt water?". So instead of going into how "normal saline (0.9%) contains 308 mOsm/L, which effectively mimics the osmolarity of body fluids" I just said because it's most compatable with blood, and ever the philosopher I added: "I guess because we evolved from the sea".

Oh Boy, big mistake. Huge. My bad. Bad nurse, bad.

"WELL, SOME OF US DON'T BELIEVE THAT!!!"

[EvolveOrConvolve]

3. One of my pets had surgery requiring an IV

and the bill from my vet didn't even include the saline for the IV, presumably because it's so inexpensive that it didn't even rate a line item on the invoice.

[mwooldri]

4. Believe it or not, saline is by prescription.

My son has an augmented bladder using intestinal tissue. Since intestines make a fair bit of mucous, his bladder needs to be flushed out regularly with saline.

His doctor has advised that if the insurance company does not pay for saline, we are to make our own. A bottle of distilled water and add seasalt or kosher salt (no iodine). Cost for one gallon? About $1.19. The 16 oz bottles can cost about $6-$10, and need a prescription. Since we hit our out of pocket cost for health insurance early on each year, we personally incur no monetary cost for getting it... but still it's not cheap.

This is of course for saline that won't get pumped in via an iv. The sealed saline bags for iv treatment cost much more.