Keep questioning health care costs

Regarding the May 19 Gazette editorial, “Making sense of it”:

I appreciated the figures used in the article to emphasize the problem of health care costs. I have long felt that the problem with the health care system was not in figuring out how to pay for them, but in the providers of the health care services. They should be held accountable as to why the costs are what they are charging.

In the 1970s, nursing homes had to have periodic cost reports to justify what they were to receive for the Title 19 residents, with a cap, of course. I don't know why the chronically ill and elderly patients should have to shoulder such a huge burden for their health care needs after working all their lives and paying into the systems. Price tags for medical services, supplies and medications are much too high for what we get.

Medicare and Medicaid should not be taking what they are being billed for without making the providers prove what the payment should be. I know that the payers do not pay the full amount charged and the payments vary with the location of the services but how do they reach the figures they do pay?

I encourage you to continue to dig into this problem.

Beverly A. Johnson

Cedar Rapids