21–30 of 256 posts
I went in for a physical and even though they said to my face my insurance would fully cover a heart electrocardiogram (my family has a history of heart problems) I wound up with a huge bill, month long fight with insurance, and ended up just having to foot it.
Maybe if medical care was driven by some other force besides capitalism this wouldn't be such an issue.
It sounds like in the "free market healthcare" system hospitals are incentivized to get the patient to spend as much as possible. That's aside from other bad incentives of such a system such as hospitals not wanting to be transparent with their prices, insurance companies not wanting to take patients with pre-existing conditions, also wanting to cover as few conditions as possible, Big Pharma being incentivized to as…
You have the wrong idea. A better example of what you're calling "free market" would be dentistry or something like Lasik surgery. You can shop around and figure out the prices because they are very much apparent since you pay out of pocket for the majority of the former and completely for the later. Would Medicaid/Medicare be "free market"? Why bother shopping around when someone else picks up the tab? Insurance com…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah lets get rid of laws and regulations, that will fix health care prices!!! /s
It actually would. No need for sarcasm on that comment.
This article makes it sound like medical costs in the US could be halved if everyone understood this problem, and did their own research on proposed procedures.
IMO, the only way this is going to change is a movement away from the "pay for services" model that is dominant in US healthcare today.
Sounds like another one of those "this is what happens when money (as opposed to patient wellbeing) becomes a driving factor in health care." I remember I tried to find a PCP once and I showed up for my intake appointment and the young, rushed doctor said they wouldn't enroll me as an official member unless I had two intake visits. They were gaming the insurance system.
> I showed up for my intake appointment and the young, rushed doctor said they wouldn't enroll me as an official member "Intake appointment"? "Official member"? What kind of system is this?
All of them in my area have long waiting lists. You don't just show up at the front door like it's an auto mechanic's shop, you call to schedule your annual physical. They're typically booked solid for a few months in advance. Calling to book an appointment requires being a registered patient or member of that office.
If you want to change your primary care physician, you call around and see which offices are accepting new members. If they are, they'll get your medical records transferred and set you up for an intake appointment where they check to make sure that they know your status, and then you are able to schedule future visits.
You certainly don't just call any convenient office and expect to get an appointment in the next couple days, that would be anarchy.
It sounds like in the "free market healthcare" system hospitals are incentivized to get the patient to spend as much as possible. That's aside from other bad incentives of such a system such as hospitals not wanting to be transparent with their prices, insurance companies not wanting to take patients with pre-existing conditions, also wanting to cover as few conditions as possible, Big Pharma being incentivized to as…
You have the wrong idea. A better example of what you're calling "free market" would be dentistry or something like Lasik surgery. You can shop around and figure out the prices because they are very much apparent since you pay out of pocket for the majority of the former and completely for the later. Would Medicaid/Medicare be "free market"? Why bother shopping around when someone else picks up the tab? Insurance com…
"Death rates from female breast cancer dropped 39% from 1989 to 2015." - all other things being equal, it ought to have increased: age is a risk factor for cancers, and we have an older population. Instead, it has greatly decreased.
So I dispute the veracity of several of the article's claims, but also: what is considered unnecessary changes with the benefit of hindsight.
I would argue that it's expected that a majority of diagnostic tests deliver a negative result (i.e. turn out to be "unnecessary"), and this is actually a mark of a healthy healthcare system.
It's a question of fundamental incentives. Doctors and hospitals are paid for procedures, treatments, and appointments. Is it any surprise that there's incentive to undertake these activities? You don't even need to believe that your doctor is greedy to understand that if there's a borderline case, they might order the test or treatment "to be safe", or "because there's no downside", or because "we have the available…