Itemized doctor's charges

[hanktrent]

This is pretty cool. It's a list of itemized charges for medical procedures, that the doctors in Covington Kentucky decided to charge in 1853, based on what they believed were typical charges by the doctors in Cincinnati. Though it's 1853, it shows the relative cost and the way charges were calculated.

http://books.google.com/books?id=IHgBAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA131

It's quite detailed, including things like day visit, night visit, cost per mile, office advice, consultation, and specific procedures like delivering the placenta, venesection, introducing a catheter, and surgical procedures. Removing a stone in the bladder ran $100 to $500, while amputating a finger or toe was only $5 to $20. Plus lots more.

Not only does it indicate prices, it also shows what things were common enough that a doctor felt it was worth posting a price or price range for.

Hank Trent
hanktrent@voyager.net

[NoahBriggs]

And at the end is a reference to a "plastic operation", which ranges from fifty to five hundred dollars. Wonder if that's the same thing as plastic surgery today? I have read in a secondary source that rebuilding faces was done during the War, and was pioneered by maxilofacial surgeons in Atlanta, and was indeed referred to back then as "plastic surgery".

[FloridaConfederate]

Demonstrates to me that health care has always been expensive and something, then as today, you had better take full personal accountability for.

Look at the prices compared to wages...cost of common goods....etc

No socialized medicine there.