Grocery store medicine

The Armstrongs recently asserted: “According to Lewin’s figures, the uninsured as a group pay 45 percent of their costs, while private charity pays another 14 percent. Yet most of the uninsured pay all of their costs.”

“As a group” means half of the “group” plus one person pays 60 percent of their costs. Otherwise you are talking about part of an uninsured group paying 60 percent. “As a group,” whether 10, 100 or 1,000 people, only 60 percent of that group’s medical costs gets paid and 40 percent goes uncollected. So how can it be that “most of the uninsured pay all of their costs”? Aren’t the two sentences mutually exclusive?

Why don’t the Armstrongs just say that $239 million is the loss hospitals, doctors, ambulance service, etc., suffer because of the uninsured instead of hiding it in the “free from provider” language. It is not “free from provider.” Saying it is “free from provider” is like saying food is “free from provider” when it is stolen from the grocery store. In fact, the grocery store suffers a loss just like the medical care providers. Grocers make up losses by charging other customers more. Why is it somehow unconscionable for medical providers to do the same?

By the way, $7,000 of that is one doctor’s loss in Mesa County because the county commissioners decided they would not pay for treatment for an attempted suicide victim. That does not include the hospital, which also took its own hit from the county commissioners.