This is a part of the article, that I think makes the case.
The ‘follow-up appointment’
For many people in medical debt, a trip to the emergency room leads to the courtroom
By Eli Saslow
Eli Saslow
Reporter on the National desk
August 17 at 5:41 PM
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There was one person in town who did believe patients had another choice, and over the past several years Daniel Moore had begun encouraging his clients to make it.
“Don’t pay one cent,” the lawyer had advised dozens of clients. “I don’t care how much the hospital says you owe. Fight them over it.”
Moore had been working for almost five decades as a self-described “old hillbilly lawyer” out of a converted house downtown. He specialized in criminal defense, with more than 400 cases pending all over the state, and he liked to align himself with the underdog. He’d been unable to afford a doctor himself while growing up on a farm with no running water, so when clients began coming to his office with bills from Poplar Bluff Regional that they could neither pay nor understand, he had agreed to take a look.
What Moore found in some of those itemized receipts didn’t make sense to him either: $75 for a surgical mask; $11.10 for each cleaning wipe; $23.62 for two standard ibuprofen pills; $592 for a strep throat culture; $838 for a pregnancy test. He searched through court records and discovered that the hospital was collecting hundreds of monthly garnishments from hourly employees at places like Quickstop, Earl’s Diner, Wendy’s, Instant Pawn and Alan’s Muffler.
He decided to represent several hospital patients free, and went to court against the hospital for a jury trial for the first time late in 2015. Moore’s client was a Poplar Bluff police officer with decent insurance, an Army veteran who went to the emergency room one afternoon because of chronic stomach problems. He’d been given a battery of tests in the ER, then treated with three IV medications before being discharged after three hours with a bill for $6,373. His insurance had paid some, but the hospital was suing him for co-pays totaling about $1,650, plus interest.
“The facts show that he came to the hospital and received treatment that alleviated his symptoms,” the hospital’s lawyer at the time told the jury. “He received three separate bills. He just didn’t pay the balance.”
“These charges are outrageous,” Moore told the jury. “He doesn’t owe the hospital anything.”
A billing manager from the hospital took the stand and said Poplar Bluff’s prices were in line with other hospitals in rural Missouri. She mentioned the high cost of providing care at rural hospitals, which must pay higher salaries in order to recruit doctors, nurses and specialists while also suffering more from federal cuts to Medicaid and Medicare compared with urban hospitals.
Moore began to question her about each charge on his client’s itemized receipt. Why, he asked, did it cost $800 to spend approximately 40 seconds with a doctor? Why was the hospital charging $211 for an oxygen sensor that was on sale for $16 at Walmart? Then Moore asked about three identical charges on the bill labeled “IV Push,” which each cost $365.
“An IV push, if I understand it, that’s the act of sticking the needle in that little port and then squeezing it,” Moore said. “Is that right?”
“Yes,” the billing manager said.
“So that takes maybe five seconds, right?”
“Yes.”
“So you, the hospital, think that act alone, not counting the drugs inside the IV, which cost thousands of dollars more — that act alone is worth $365.38?”
“Yes,” she said again.
“It makes me so mad,” Moore told the jury, in his closing argument. “If you’re content to let the hospital just crush people, then go on and give them their measly $1,650. But what you can do today is say, ‘Hey, we’re tired of this.’ How many times are we going to let working people take the shaft?”
“In reality, this is a simple bill,” the hospital’s lawyer countered. “All we’re asking for is his co-pay and his deductible. The hospital provided treatment. He still owes.”
The jury deliberated for less than an hour and then found in favor of Moore’s client, wiping away his hospital debts.
But whatever sense of victory Moore felt was mitigated over the next months as Poplar Bluff Regional’s lawsuits continued to spread across the civil courts of Southeast Missouri, and he agreed to take on more free cases. “The hospital circuit,” Moore called it, which meant Mondays in Caruthersville, Tuesdays in West Plains and Wednesdays in Poplar Bluff.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/the-follow-up-appointment/2019/08/17/1be5ded6-b936-11e9-a091-6a96e67d9cce_story.html?wpisrc=nl_most&wpmm=1
DO SOMETHING!
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