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A newborn has successfully undergone an operation to remove a sacrococcygeal teratoma tumor at 23 weeks, 5 days into the mother's pregnancy. The mother gave birth to the baby during week 35:
A baby girl from Lewisville, Texas, has been "born" twice after she was taken out of her mother's womb for 20 minutes for life-saving surgery.
At 16 weeks pregnant, Margaret Hawkins Boemer discovered her daughter, Lynlee Hope, had a tumour on her spine.
The mass, known as a sacrococcygeal teratoma, was diverting blood from the foetus - raising the risk of fatal heart failure.
[...] Doctor Darrell Cass of Texas Children's Fetal Centre was one of the team who carried out the surgery. He said the tumour had been so large that a "huge" incision was required to reach it, leaving the baby "hanging out in the air".
Lynlee's heart virtually stopped during the procedure but a heart specialist kept her alive while most of the tumour was removed, he added. The team then placed her back in her mother's womb and sewed her uterus up.
This isn't the first surgery of its kind:
"Baby Boemer is still an infant but is doing beautiful," said Cass, remarking that she is perfectly healthy. His one previous surgery of this kind was also a success. "I think she's about 7 now, and she sings karaoke to Taylor swift[sic] -- she's completely normal," said Cass.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Wednesday October 26 2016, @02:29PM
Much as it is a miracle of modern medicine that this child survived, this is exactly why America has the most expensive health care system in the world. TFA doesn't say anything about the finances, but I'd guess that the procedure was covered past a deductible by insurance at a cost of at least 7 figures. The rest of us have to pay for that with higher premiums. Not only that, but I'd also guess that paying off that deductible (likely at least $4000) took a few years, and hospitals don't pay doctors with IOUs. The American taxpayer footed the bill, paying the heroic doctors who performed the procedure, and the four-figure debt probably paid hospital administrators instead.
I suppose there is no other system in the world that could provide this kind of extremely expensive care to the average person. But I'm not happy that procedures like this are responsible for my premiums going up. Miscarriages have been a fact of life for the entire history of human existence. Was it really worth it to prevent this one?
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 26 2016, @02:44PM
if it wasn't worth it, it wouldn't have happened.
and you're an asshole.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Wednesday October 26 2016, @10:17PM
It's hard to tell if it's worth it when the family is facing a fixed deductible and the health insurance company is facing contractual obligations based on doctor's recommendations with nobody even able to find out what the total costs really were.
And yes, I am being an asshole. It's the internet and somebody had to say it. As a matter of personal conviction...I'm not as concerned as I seem. Mainly I want to see somebody (like AthanasiusKircher below) refute me.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Wednesday October 26 2016, @04:26PM
Much as it is a miracle of modern medicine that this child survived, this is exactly why America has the most expensive health care system in the world. TFA doesn't say anything about the finances, but I'd guess that the procedure was covered past a deductible by insurance at a cost of at least 7 figures. The rest of us have to pay for that with higher premiums.
If you're really going to "follow the money" in a situation like this, you should at least dig a bit deeper and ask why the cost is so high for procedures in the first place. Obviously with a new or experimental procedure, there will be all sorts of extra costs, but most routine medical care and procedures have huge cost inflation too.
But I'm not happy that procedures like this are responsible for my premiums going up.
Is this really the reason you have a high premium? A one-in-ten-million procedure that costs a bundle? What about the routine procedures and services hospitals perform every day that "cost" tens of thousands of dollars? Throw together just a few of the top surgical procedures -- say, spinal fusion surgery, angioplasty, and knee replacements -- and you're already talking about over $35 billion annually. If you could shave even a dollar or two off each of these procedures (which all cost more than $10,000 on average), you could easily pay for a some very unusual case that costs a few million.
Could it be that health care premiums are so ridiculously high because EVERYBODY in the system is skimming a bit off the top? Why is health insurance so high? Well, you start by saying that doctors and hospitals charge a lot. Why do they charge a lot? Well, aside from obvious salaries and such, equipment is expensive. Malpractice insurance is expensive. Why are these expensive? Because medical equipment companies, pharmaceutical companies, etc. charge huge premiums even for standard medical equipment and drugs that have been around for decades. And liitigation crazy lawyers are ready to sue at a moment's notice (and skim quite a bit off the top for themselves, too).
And underlying a lot of all these problems is the very concept of "insurance" itself. Not only do insurance companies also skim a bunch off the top (and cause all sorts of indirect costs by requiring medical coding experts and other folks in doctor's offices to argue with the insurance companies over whether to approve a claim), they also make costs indirect and less transparent at many stages of the process, causing them to be just accepted rather than seen and discussed directly by the people who are paying for them or even charging them.
Once you start thinking about it, there's an incredible amount of inefficiency in the healthcare system, leading to high costs that are mostly propped up by insurance administration (and other unnecessary middlemen) and the fact that many people at many stages of this feel they "can charge just a bit more" because they know they're often providing lifesaving care -- or at least care that can have significant impacts on people's lives.
Remove all of this stuff, and the cost of many routine procedures potentially could be lowered by an order of magnitude. But it's probably impossible to get rid of all the unnecessary crap. Still -- tweak any part of the system, and you can probably shave off 10% somewhere. I could even go into a few more specific changes that could even make a huge difference while likely increasing quality of care, but I don't want to get bogged down in specific policy debates.
So, yeah... I'm all for removing inefficiency in the American healthcare system. And maybe at some point we'll have to start making "hard choices" about whether to provide expensive procedures to the average Joe. But first, maybe we should focus on shaving off the huge amounts of waste that are the BULK of the costs in your insurance premium.