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Colorado ski trips, gold-plated shotguns, and plain old American cash. According to federal investigators, physicians accepted these lures from manufacturers working to convince doctors to implant a particular brand of pacemaker in their patient — including patients who did not need the electronic device that helped to regulate the heartbeat. More than 130,000 Americans underwent surgery in 1982 to get a pacemaker. The device cost from $600 to $900 to make, but hospitals were billed from $2,000 to $5,000 apiece, and then they added a markup of 50 to 150 percent before sending the whole cost on to Medicare or other insurance plans. In a country with too many specialists, unnecessary surgery was a major concern. Senate and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) investigators estimated that up to 50 percent of the implantations done at some hospitals were unnecessary. They estimated that as much as half of the $2 billion Medicare...
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This section contains 846 words (approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page) |
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