How To Improve Sleep Quality, Muscle Growth & Daily Mood - Dr Peter Attia (4K)

What's this story about your son going to hospital and getting some insane medical charge for a tiny procedure?

Y- yeah, well it's- it's unfortunately a very common story, right, where anybody goes to the ER and, you know, they end up needing a bag of IV fluids or something like that, and then they- they get a bill for thousands of dollars. And you actually look through the line item and you realize this is comical, right? You literally charged me $1,400 for a bag of normal saline that costs, I don't know, somewhere between $2 and $3. Um, but it sort of speaks to a lot of the breaks in the, uh, specifically in the American healthcare system.

What is it... Why is it so broken? What... Is it because it's a commercial enterprise? Is it because it needs to be, uh... additional funds need to be brought in from places where they shouldn't? What's going on?

It has to do with the complexity of a multi-payer system, and basically the way contracts are negotiated between payers and hospitals. And you have to decide in those negotiations who is in network and who is out of network. Um, that's, like, one sliver of one problem. Uh, this- this exists on- on so many levels. Um, but in- in that case, I think the issue came down to, you know, some very high deductible that wasn't met coupled with, you know, some out of network thing. But the- the truth of it is, there's also ridiculous pricing. So- so there's a... sort of a false sense of how much things cost in hospitals. It's sort of funny money. Like, "We're gonna really, really mark up the price so that we can give you a big discount if you're in network."

Right.

Y- y- you know, so you- you see this across the board with all sorts of things in medicine.

And to rehydrate your son, it costs, like, six grand or something.

I can't remember the dollar amount. It was so egregious. Um, and again, I... It- it's infuriating to me when you keep in- in- in mind the fact that, you know, probably the average American would have a hard time on short notice producing $1,000. And yeah, I'm fortunate enough that I can produce $1,000 without, uh, too much difficulty. But for the average person, maybe 50% of the population, that's a really big deal and that's a huge inconvenience, right? That means... that changes your plans-

Yeah.

... dramatically. It means you're not taking a vacation that summer. It means you're not, you know, not able to go out with your family for a movie night.

How long are you paying off that-

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

... credit card debt for, et cetera.

And it totally... It's totally inexcusable.

I went to a ghost tour in New Orleans five years ago, and the guy that was taking the tour finished up afterward, and I was asking him about the American healthcare system, and he said this thing, it's really stuck with me. He said, "If you get hit by a car, you'd better walk it off." His point being that there are medical emergencies that can happen that can ruin your life by you having to fix them, not by you not fixing them.