I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…

The benefit of this is that Sioux Falls is the most formidably hospitaled city in the world, I think. I heard once that we have the hospital system of a city three times our size, which I believe. The level of health care available in Sioux Falls is amazing.

Yet health care expenses are out of control. I used to work in corporate IT, with a nice, cushy health plan. Now I’m self-employed at a small company not yet at the dizzying heights of success and domination that Electric Pulp has achieved, and so I have to buy health insurance on the open-market. It’s expensive and the coverage is narrow.

My wife and I added it up once. The monthly health and dental expenses that used to be covered under a $180-month payroll deduction now cost us $1,100 per month. Out of pocket. And every July, my premiums go up. Last July they went up 15%. At that rate, they double in five years.

Worse, my deductible is $5,000. Per person. In Spring 2005, we were not yet aware my daughter was allergic to peanuts. Consequently, we fed her what turned out to be an $8,000 peanut butter sandwich (my out-of-pocket cost, mind you — insurance kicked in maybe $3,000).

Contrast this to when I worked in the corporate world and I had emergency gallbladder surgery. The bill was $21,000. The only thing not covered were the little rubber-soled socks they gave me every day. A buck seventy-five a day times six days equals the happiest I’ve ever been to write a check for $10.50.

My point is that health care is expensive, though most people are totally insulated through nice group health plans. I’m not, which leads me back to my point that I would like the Hospital Wars to end so money can start going towards what I think is the most important goal in the world right now: lowering the price of health care.

Mr. Sanford has dropped the atomic bomb of the Hospital Wars, and I congratulate him for it. So can the facilities race be over now? If McKennan gets the urge to build a new building, can they just…not? Can they instead take the money and plow it back into their operating budget to subsidize the unbelievable cost of hospital care? From my perspective, having more reasonable rates is more prestigious than having a new building.

But that’s just me.

$400M donation to propel Sioux Falls Health System into leading health research role.
Technorati Tags: ……