Your health is important -- but at what cost?
Florida's attorney general is investigating whether hospitals are being transparent with patients
You’re not feeling well and you end up in the Emergency Room. Your doctor orders an MRI. But do you know what it will cost and if you’ll have anything left in the bank afterwards?
Under Florida and federal law, the price tag of medical procedures is supposed to be disclosed. But advocacy groups say often it is not.
One such group, PatientRightsAdvocate.org, recently studied 2,000 hospitals nationwide to test their compliance with the Hospital Price Transparency Rule and reported that less than a third of the Florida hospitals, for instance, were fully following the guidelines, according to the South Florida Sun Sentinel reporter Cindy Goodman.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier has issued subpoenas to two Florida-based hospitals to test their compliance. In a video he posted on Twitter, currently known as X, he wrote:
Patients are still consumers, and they deserve transparency. The big healthcare industry complex continues to rake in billions off Americans in their most vulnerable moments. We must protect patients.
Stay tuned to see if that goes anywhere.
Meanwhile, if you’re curious about the cost of possible medical procedures, here’s one resource to check out. It’s the Florida Health Price Finder. It was developed by the Agency for Health Care Administration.
Tons and tons of pythons
Thanks to the Conservancy of Southwest Florida, there are fewer invasive pythons in the Everglades now.
The Naples-based organization reports that it removed 6,300 pounds of the snakes—a total of 130 adult pythons, the largest of which was 17 feet long. A snake that big can take down a deer.
They are tricky in how they do this. They tag male ”scout” snakes with radio frequency devices then follow them to egg-laying females. So, not only do they end up removing the actual reptiles, they diminish the species’ egg-laying capacity, too.
Reminder from my monthly newsletter:
Today is June 10. For all the writers out there, it is Ballpoint Pen Day. Personally, I prefer a fountain pen, but to each scribbler their own.
You can impress your friends and annoy your frenemies with this bit of trivia today:
The ballpoint pen isn’t all that modern. It was invented way back in 1888.
J.C. Bruce is a journalist and author of The Strange Files series of mysterious novels (available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, other online booksellers, and at selected libraries). He also writes a monthly newsletter (of which this is an update) designed to make you the smartest person in the room—or the Zoom. He holds dual citizenship in the United States of America and Florida, and was recently awarded an honorary doctorate from the Lightgate Institute of Extranormal Studies, which he totally made up for his book Strange Timing.
TROPIC PRESS, publisher of The Strange Files series of mysterious adventures, is pleased to also be the official publisher of J.C. Bruce’s new novella, Scribbles From Space.
