WeAreTheKey

Apparently, you have had to pay for your own bills when a hospital/doctor screws up and performs the wrong surgeries or screws up a procedure. I don't know how they could've billed people for these thigns in the first place but...

MSNBC
Hospitals in nearly half the states in the nation now say they won’t bill patients for the worst kind of medical mistakes, including operating on the wrong body part or the wrong person, or giving someone the wrong blood.

The list has more than doubled since February, when an msnbc.com analysis showed that hospital associations in 11 states urged their members to waive payment for specific errors dubbed “never events” because they should never happen at all.

“It really does go to the heart of our patients’ confidence,” said Craig Becker, president of the Tennessee Hospital Association, which adopted a plan in June. “When you look at these adverse events, these are pretty gross errors.”

Full Article: www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26081421

Interesting, but I'm skeptical and have some questions that the article doesn't address:

Are hospitals and doctors currently getting away with any and all mistakes they make on the operating table? I just don't see how they could have made people pay for the things they mention, anyway. Operating on the wrong body part, or person (wtf), seems to be a clearly winning malpractice lawsuit.

Are patients in those states now waiving malpractice claims in exchange for simply not getting billed? If so, the hospitals in those states are making out like bandits in this deal. I wonder what the fine print in this deal says.

I'd say more info is needed before this is declared definite "good" news.

Ha, yeah you're totally right...

But I needed something to get the 'Good News' Forum off the ground and it was all I found

I was wondering the same things though, like "how is this some new development?" Surely they didn't force people to pay for things like "You came in for a nose job, but we gave you a double lung transplant, an appendectomy, a triple heart bypass, and a horse-hoof for a left hand...sorry! That'll be $655,899...."

?!@?!@?!@$%