This past year I became eligible for Medicare and my first experience was a bit different that I had expected. Late last year I visited a physician in the St. Luke's office building adjacent to the hospital. I needed a renewal on a cholesterol prescription and the visit took all of 20-25 minutes. Several weeks later I received a bill from St. Luke's-Boise for $58.38 showing a Medicare payment of $16.38 and a balance of $42.00 described as Clinic-Internal.
We sent a check and assumed, wrongly, that was that.
About three weeks ago I received another bill from the physician for $5l.00 with a Medicare partial payment of $10.80 and a balance to me of $40.20. Thinking it was a bill we already paid, I ignored it until I received another one this month. After calling both St. Luke's-Boise and the physician's office, I managed to learn that if one visits a doctor in the office building, you will receive two bills ... at least Medicare customers will. One for the customary office visit and a second one from St. Luke's for office rent. You read that correctly ... office rent. Just the way the young lady in the Boise billing office described it when asked what the charges were for.
I find this quite interesting since I can easily recall the testimony before Blaine County P&Z seven or eight years ago when St. Luke's was applying for zoning permission to build the office building. At that time management made the case that they needed doctors in close proximity to the hospital and there would be supplemental income from the physicians rental income to help with total hospital operations. That was a plausible explanation of their need, and the county went along with the zoning approval.
Today, things have apparently changed and the visiting patients (or is it just Medicare patients) are now expected to pick up the office rent or parts of it each and every visit. The building must be incapable of generating the income for an acceptable cap rate from the office rent alone, so apparently management has decided to zap each customer and extra $50 or so for the experience.
Many in our society feel that oil companies are the pariahs of our world. I happen to believe corporate health care beats the oil industry hands down, no comparison.
Dennis Wright
Bellevue
