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Israel agrees to extend truce as Hamas resumes firing rockets. PAGE A-3
Pojoaque Pueblo’s gaming compact proposal is a nonstarter. OUR VIEW, B-2
David Rigsby looks over medical bills at his home in Embudo earlier this month.
Steep markups hidden in hospital bills strike blow to New Mexico’s uninsured
With creative PAC strategies, campaign cash skirts limits Following the money gets complicated when groups funnel funds to other PACs making a concentrated effort to seize control of the state House of Representatives — currently held by Democrats 37-33 — PACs and other political organizations, both state and national, already have begun pouring money into the state. “It really is like a game of Whac-a-Mole,” said former state Sen. Dede Feldman, D-Albuquerque, in talking about how efforts to stop big money from influencing elections have only led to different ways for the money to flow. Feldman sponsored the 2009 bill that established campaign contribution limits. When asked if the current situation is what she envisioned when she fought for the law, she laughed. “The word that comes to my mind is circumvent,” she said. Feldman said Citizens United and the trend of more outside campaign money coming into the state has contributed to the situation. And outside groups, she said, have changed the focus of
By Steve Terrell The New Mexican
While nearly all politicians say they favor “transparency,” and the state has passed laws trying to make it easier to track sources of campaign money, in reality, it’s getting harder and harder to determine who is footing the bill. Some blame the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which overturned limits on how much independent groups can spend in an election. But with the continuing rise of political action committees and superPACs — not to mention the “social welfare” organizations that don’t even have to report who their contributors are — it can all look like a shell game for those trying to follow the money. New Mexico’s campaign contribution limits went into effect two years ago, but the practice of big PACs funneling money into smaller PACs has become a way to get around those limits. And this year, with Republicans
Please see CASH, Page A-5
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David Rigsby, who is uninsured, has been fighting two hospitals in the state that have billed him tens of thousands of dollars for two procedures. PHOTOS BY JANE PHILLIPS/THE NEW MEXICAN
The New Mexican
T
he bill totaled more than $21,000, and David Rigsby’s creditors were threatening to heap on another $9,000 if he didn’t pay up. Presbyterian Española Hospital had charged the sum for a colonoscopy and hernia repair in 2005. Both procedures took about an hour. Rigsby, a 66-year-old former volunteer emergency medical technician, didn’t even spend the night in the hospital. Rigsby paid $3,000 upfront and, because he was uninsured, the hospital granted him a $2,317 discount as a “self-pay” patient. Still, the cost seemed awfully high to Rigsby, so he began researching how hospitals set prices and whether the bill that haunted him was correct. Rigsby’s quest led him to an assortment of advocacy groups that steered him to a secret buried deep in patients’ billing records — the cost basis for his bill. What Rigsby discovered was the that cost
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u High prices raise questions about hospitals’ charity status. PAGE A-5
has been in a black box for decades,” said Dr. Neel Shah, assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and co-founder of the nonprofit Costs of Care, which advocates for lower costs and other reforms in the nation’s health care system. “What you’re seeing in New Mexico is representative of what’s going on nationally.”
Wildly varying costs According to an analysis by The New Mexican of hospital pricing data from 2012, released by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, hospitals in the state set prices for outpatients 547 percent higher on average than the Medicare rate of reimbursement. Eastern New Mexico
Please see COST, Page A-4
Los Alamos hopes for ‘Manhattan’ boom Community eager for exposure new series could bring By Milan Simonich The New Mexican
Krahe Mee, July 17 Obituaries Daniel T. Jonathan Abrams, Rodriguez, 85, July 18 July 9 Sophia St. Ange, Jacob M. July 11 Rodriguez, 90, James “Jamie” Santa Fe, July 22 Butler, 46, July 17 Marian M. Schulz, Connie K. Carrillo, 92, July 21 70, Pecos, July 24 Rafaelita (Lita) Joe Lawrence Mascarenas, July 21 M. Vigil, 82, July 15 Jean Caroline PAGES C-2, C-3
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the hospital charges the federal government for the same procedures under Medicare was exponentially lower than what it charged him. By law, the Medicare rate of reimbursement is the amount the government estimates is the actual cost to a hospital for providing a service, including facility costs, equipment and the medical personnel necessary to perform it. In Rigsby’s case, the total cost was $2,406.59 — nearly 10 times lower than he had been billed, according to documents Rigsby shared with The New Mexican. “It really is insane,” said Rigsby, who ultimately paid $9,630.60 of the five-figure bill, including $2,431 to the hospital’s collection agency, before the hospital stopped pursuing the debt. Rigsby caught on early to a trend that, thanks to provisions in the Affordable Care Act, has become abundantly apparent: Hospitals everywhere set medical prices that far exceed what Medicare estimates to be the cost of preforming those services. “You’re shining a light on something that
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Los Alamos, the town that mushroomed in secrecy, now hopes all eyes will be on it. The television series Manhattan premieres Sunday night, and this one-hour weekly drama is shining a spotlight on Los Alamos, not New York City. A mix of fact and fiction, the show is about the Manhattan Project scientists and staff members who built the first atomic bomb during World War II.
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“Our work is so classified the vice president doesn’t know we exist,” one of the show’s characters says in a preview clip. It’s no wonder John Nance Garner complained that being vice president was not worth a bucket of warm spit. Garner left office before Manhattan begins in 1943. Henry A. Wallace was vice president by then and, apparently, in the dark. Another character in the series teaser makes it plain that the characters in Manhattan will be more than pretty faces. “We have the highest combined IQ of any town in America,” he says.
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Actors perform clerical duties at military police headquarters on the set of Manhattan. The show, a drama based in Los Alamos in the 1940s, follows the lives of scientists and their families in the race to create the atomic bomb. LUKE E. MONTAVON/NEW MEXICAN FILE PHOTO
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