Costs for arthroscopic sx? (California) (California) (Califo

[rbaird]

This thread illustrates the difficulty in health care reform and a system which requires reasonable and humane medical cost containment. There is no basic agreement on what medical services "should" cost and little agreement on what they "do" cost in practice. It is unrealistic to expect private carriers to subsidize medicare or workers' comp cases, assuming identical procedures. It may be rational in the present system for a medical provider to bill far more than it is willing to accept, but getting to the famous bottom line in these matters is rather like pinning a jellyfish to the wall. I believe a substantial minority of contested cases I heard in the last year or two of my career involved liens. All too often, the litigants were talking apples and oranges...