$6,600 Avastin Dose Gets Billed at $27,360

[Toro]

That's quite a mark-up.

The single biggest item in the medical bills from Terence Foley’s seven-year fight with kidney cancer was $27,360, for each of four intravenous treatments with Avastin, a cancer drug made by Genentech Inc.

The charges from the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where Foley died in 2007 at the age of 67, were included in almost 5,000 pages of medical records compiled by Bloomberg. The amount was more than four times what Genentech said the cost should have been and four times the total paid by Foley’s insurer.

The nonprofit hospital, part of the University of Pennsylvania Health System, is contractually barred from discussing the markup, according to Susan Phillips, a spokeswoman. The system, which includes three hospital, collects on average 25 cents of each dollar billed, and prices need to be high enough to cover uncompensated care that totaled more than $100 million last year, Phillips said in an e-mail.

A financial report for the system’s fiscal year ended June 30, 2007, showed a 16 percent operating margin, or income after expenses, depreciation, amortization and interest. ...

Avastin Dose Costing $6,600 Became $27,360 in Hospital Billing - Bloomberg.com

 

[Oddball]

The charges from the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia

Funny how Big Edumacation never seems to get caught up in accusations of the dreaded "price gouging".