Brownwood Diamonds or Kidney Stones ?

Gold standard prices?

Kidney stones cost more than diamonds today
By NEIL D. ROSENBERG
Posted: Oct. 2, 2004

You really want to give your beloved a valuable rock? Forget diamonds. Try a kidney stone.
It won't be quite as pretty. A calcium oxalate kidney stone, the most common, is a yucky brownish-black with a sort of pockmarked surface - like a tiny moon or an ugly, magnified grain of sand.
But it sure is expensive.
The one I passed recently cost $4,351.15. And that was for a less-than-three-hour visit to the local hospital emergency room during which I received pain medication (thank you very, very much for that); an efficient and professional physician examination (which concurred immediately with my own self-diagnosis since it was my third stone in the past 25 years); a CT scan (which confirmed the stone's presence and two others waiting in the wings, one in each kidney); an assortment of blood and urine lab tests and the physician fees (emergency room doctor and radiologists).
I passed the stone while I was still in the ER, on my own. So that part was free.
But to put that $4,351.15 bill into perspective, let's return to the diamond analogy.
My kidney stone was roughly (pun intended)
3 millimeters in diameter. A one-carat, round-shaped diamond is roughly 6.3 millimeters in diameter or more than twice as large.
A medium-quality diamond of that size will actually cost about $4,200. I know this because I recently went through the confusing and time-consuming process of trying to buy a one-carat diamond, an experience only slightly less painful than passing a kidney stone.
That one-carat diamond, based on the "value" of a kidney stone less than half its size, would actually cost more than $9,100.
The term "gold standard" is often used in medicine to denote the best accepted medical treatment. At $400 an ounce, gold is a bargain compared to kidney stones and diamonds. This country may at one time have been able to afford the gold standard, but the standard to which medical charges have now risen is just too high.
In the 1970s, when I became a medical reporter, the amount of health care costs as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product (the cost of all goods and services in the United States) was in the 5% range, and already there were concerns it was too high.
In fact, President Nixon, not known as a progressive by any standard, actually instituted wage and price controls in the health care industry. They ultimately failed. As my colleague Leon Hughes put it, "You can control a physician's fees, but not his income."
That's a succinct way of saying that the health care industry, maybe even more than the defense industry, has an uncanny ability to adapt to any playing field to extract revenue from the pockets of Americans at almost unprecedented rates.
That 5% of GDP for health care costs in the 1970s morphed into 8.8% in 1980; 12% in 1990; 13.2% in 2000 and an estimated 15.3% in 2003. That equates to a jump of 36% between 1980 and 1990, and 50% between 1980 and 2000.
But it is much worse when you look at per capita health care costs, the costs for every man, woman and child in the United States after dividing total costs by total population.
In 1980, it was $1,067; in 1990, $2,738; and in 2000, $4,499 (eerily close to the cost of my one kidney stone). That's a percentage jump of 322% between 1980 and 2000.
I am not saying that I was gouged by the hospital that treated me. I am sure their charges are in line, more or less, with similar hospitals in similar areas across the country. It is just too much. Period.
The villains are easy to spot, depending on who you listen to: greedy drug companies; too many hospitals that act too much like General Motors and not enough like the Salvation Army; technology run rampant (my CT scans accounted for nearly $2,200 of the charges); too many lawsuits; underfunded government health programs that shift costs to the insured; too many uninsured people who drain hospitals, physicians and labs of resources; too many medical mistakes that needlessly kill and maim tens of thousands annually, and a slovenly public that can't or won't pursue more healthy lifestyles.
But the biggest problem may well be an electorate that has done little to put pressure on the presidency, Congress, states, health insurance firms, drug companies, medical associations and hospitals to rein in the rising costs.
I always thought throughout my career as a reporter and editor that there would come a point when health costs would rise to a level where the public would have enough and revolt. I thought it would be when health care costs reached 10% of the GDP. Then 12%. Certainly 15%.
But it was not to be. Maybe it's now - when kidney stones cost twice as much as diamonds.

Neil D. Rosenberg is a Wisconsin and Florida writer who was the medical reporter for The Milwaukee Journal.

From the Oct. 3, 2004, editions of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
source: http://www.jsonline.com/news/editorials/oct04/263314.asp