Healthcare Blue Book

[maxx]

http://www.healthcarebluebook.com/pa...actDoctor.aspx

"... A recent Thompson Healthcare study reported that insurers frequently pay between $500 and $3,000 for the same MRI. Choosing the best provider can save you $2,500 or more..."

[maxx]

http://detnews.com/article/20110110/...eform-repealed
"An estimated 126,300 Michigan small businesses would lose tax credits for health insurance, 32,800 young adults wouldn't be covered under their parents' plans and more than 2 million Michigan residents with pre-existing health conditions could face insurance rejection, according to report by PIRGIM, the Public Interest Research Group in Michigan, a nonprofit, nonpartisan public interest advocacy organization.

[maxx]

http://www.statehealthfacts.org/comp...?ind=388&cat=8

According to Kaiser's facts, MI has a lot of emergency room visits but not a lot of hospital beds compared to other states with similar population size.

[1KielsonDrive]

http://www.healthcarebluebook.com/pa...actDoctor.aspx

"... A recent Thompson Healthcare study reported that insurers frequently pay between $500 and $3,000 for the same MRI. Choosing the best provider can save you $2,500 or more..."

As far back as 1997, I found the price difference between MRI's was approx $900.00, low end and approx $2,300.00, top end. My company at the time, CIGNA, didn't care which one I used. I had to research it on my own and present the information to CIGNA. There wasn't any apparent difference between the MRI's. CIGNA didn't care that they could save around $1,300.00 on one medical procedure. The low end was a mobile MRI unit in a truck trailer, parked on site and moved from hospital to hospital.

[maxx]

How to lower medical costs by concentrating on the chronically sick.

http://www.npr.org/2011/01/19/132931...ng-better-care

Gawande mentions that Denmark uses this approach.

http://www.denverpost.com/recommended/ci_13261279
"...According to OECD's Health Data 2009, Denmark's health cost per person, public and private, was $3,512. But in the US the cost is more than double at $7,290!.."

[rb336]

http://www.statehealthfacts.org/comp...?ind=388&cat=8

According to Kaiser's facts, MI has a lot of emergency room visits but not a lot of hospital beds compared to other states with similar population size.

seems to me that it is particularly bad in the northern lower and UP, and if you look at the lower part of the state, the beds/1000 rises very significantly

[Gistok]

rb336, I don't know if this is related or not to those figures... but many of the large hospitals in Metro Detroit [[St. John-Providence, Beaumont, DMC, Henry Ford, Oakwood) have bought up hospitals in some of the farther out areas of the lower peninnsula... and they bring their patients to the main hospitals for the serious medical care.

That's why St. John eventually wants to build a hotel on their main campus on Moross [[likely where the Woods Theatre used to be).... for the family of the patients living farther from the metro area.