Marshall Allen (speaking in a short YouTube author talk) emphasizes the importance of patient health literacy, arguing that patients can and should learn to navigate medical bills. He notes he wrote a book of eight chapters aimed at educating patients on common pitfalls, and he gives concrete advice: request an itemized medical bill because hospital invoices often present lump-sum charges and frequently contain errors.
Questions this video answers
Eight chapters.
Chapters
I think patients are so low on health literacy, and I have talked to so many patients who are so smart, I know that they have the capability to learn this and to apply this knowledge. And so I wrote the book. It has eight chapters focused on educating patients so they can understand these pitfalls and how to avoid them. I think it's a game changer to up the health literacy for patients. Just like we expect people to balance their checkbook, right? You have to learn the skill to navigate a medical bill. So let me explain the first thing everybody needs to do. Get an itemized medical bill. When you go to a hospital, they typically give you a lump sum payment for pharmacy and a lump sum payment for medical services. They don't break down all the costs. Well, you would never tolerate that if you went to the grocery store or if you went out to a nice restaurant. They break down. What are the things that make up the total of your bill? Hospitals need to do the same thing. We have a right to an itemized medical bill because experts who review medical bills will tell you most of them contain some kind of an error. So you can then get that itemized bill. You can see, did all these things that I'm being charged for actually occurring.
