BY DAVID LAZARUSBUSINESS COLUMNIST
NOV. 16, 2021 6 AM PT

Stephanie Noonan Drachkovitch recently broke her foot while horseback riding. She got treated at a UCLA-affiliated orthopedic facility in Thousand Oaks and has no complaints about the quality of care.

“My doctors were fantastic,” Drachkovitch told me. “This isn’t about them.”

What this is about, as you’ve probably already guessed, is her subsequent bill for medical care — yet another example of how our healthcare system routinely rips people off with inflated, nonsensical charges.

In Drachkovitch’s case, what caught her attention was the bill’s $809 charge for the plastic walking boot that was placed on her foot after the injury.

“I was like, ‘Whoa, really?!’ ” the Valley Village resident told me. “That’s a lot of money!”

Drachkovitch isn’t a neophyte when it comes to finances. She’s co-founder and co-chief executive of Burbank’s 44 Blue Productions, a maker of unscripted and documentary TV shows.

“As a CEO myself, I understand margins, I understand making a profit,” Drachkovitch said, adding that a markup “as high as 30%” for the treatment she received wouldn’t have been out of line.

Out of curiosity, she did a search for her foot boot, the AirCast AirSelect. She found it on Amazon for about $80.

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