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Bringing transparency to ER prices, one hospital bill at a time

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Re: Bringing transparency to ER prices, one hospital bill at a time

#111

Post by robertAngst »

corey_moncure wrote: post #42
robertAngst wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medical is in bed with the government https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=s Heck, if you want to know why something in the US sucks, just look at that list. Massive government corruption from legal bribery.

This is amazing. The list reads like a "who's who" of the most insufferable sectors of American life. I was surprised not to see auto manufacturers and agriculture in the top twenty, but medicine and telecom have definitely got them beat.

What makes auto bad?

Re: Bringing transparency to ER prices, one hospital bill at a time

#112

Post by citrablue »

HeadsUpHigh wrote: post #101
rdtsc wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ultrasound is a quick and relatively simple procedure. They could get a few in the ER and a few technicians on staff. Then doctors are encouraged to say bloodwork is off let's do an ultrasound and there you have it - $4k / 25 minutes. Bill the insurance and keep raking in the money. Normally I'd say that's far fetched but after having relatives advised to get unnecessary surgery I wouldn't be surprised.

I'm not sure what you mean by the doctors being encouraged but unless the doctor ordering the U/S is getting a cut then there is no direct incentive. But I don't know how your system works so I might be wrong.

In some emergency departments, the physicians participate in profit sharing. I know of a few EDs where they add up all the revenue, subtract all the costs, and divide the rest into each doctor's paycheck based on how much that doctor billed each month.

Re: Bringing transparency to ER prices, one hospital bill at a time

#113

Post by airstrike »

outworlder wrote: post #21
airstrike wrote: post #5

> If you are bitten by a raccoon, you can’t really decide not to get the rabies vaccine. It’s literally a life-or-death situation. But the price is incredibly high. This, to me, is a perfect example of why healthcare should be subsidized by the government (either directly or through a government-backed insurance plan that you receive as a fallback). Health isn't a good or service you choose to purchase. Demand is per…

> This, to me, is a perfect example of why healthcare should be subsidized by the government (either directly or through a government-backed insurance plan that you receive as a fallback). Nah, this doesn't really work in the US. All it does is to funnel money into the coffers of the companies that are creating the problem in the first place. There has to be some more regulation – companies need to be forced to be mo…

> This works in Brazil – you don't have to carry any form of insurance whatsoever if you don't want to. For major issues, you are covered just fine – trauma surgeons in the public network are among the best (at least in big population centers), and are often the same doctors that practice in private hospitals. My mother also got top notch cancer treatment for free. The last one is more location-dependent though.

As a Brazilian, this literally made me laugh out loud. Brazilian healthcare sucks balls. Even the US does a better job at it.

I'll just post this one article¹ about the guy who went to the ER in Rio to have one leg amputated and the doctors amputated the wrong one...

__________

1. https://extra.globo.com/noticias/rio/paciente-foi-preparado-...

Re: Bringing transparency to ER prices, one hospital bill at a time

#114

Post by trumped »

dang wrote: post #48
smacktoward wrote: post #9

As the person who submitted this story, I have a question: why was Sarah Kliff’s name removed from the headline? I submitted it with the same title it carries at CJR, which includes her name. The story is a profile of her and her work, so removing it makes the headline less informative, not more. And she’s not a celebrity, so mentioning her by name doesn’t make the headline any more clickbaity than it would be withou…

We often remove names from titles, because HN works better when the focus is on content rather than personalities. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

You forgot to remove the name from this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18295942 ... or is Tesla not a name?

Re: Bringing transparency to ER prices, one hospital bill at a time

#115

Post by dang »

trumped wrote: post #114
dang wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We often remove names from titles, because HN works better when the focus is on content rather than personalities. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...

You forgot to remove the name from this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18295942 ... or is Tesla not a name?

It's obviously not a personal name in this context. Nor is any moderation practice absolute. Please don't post frivolous nitpicks.

Re: Bringing transparency to ER prices, one hospital bill at a time

#116

Post by corey_moncure »

robertAngst wrote: post #111
corey_moncure wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is amazing. The list reads like a "who's who" of the most insufferable sectors of American life. I was surprised not to see auto manufacturers and agriculture in the top twenty, but medicine and telecom have definitely got them beat.

What makes auto bad?

The same kind of regulatory capture dynamics occurring with telecom and medicine. In the case of auto, preventing startup competition by mandating the old and needless system of dealer middlemen.

Re: Bringing transparency to ER prices, one hospital bill at a time

#117

Post by randyrand »

MichaelApproved wrote: post #65
randyrand wrote: post #29

While it wouldn’t be my first go to, I have to wonder if complete 100% deregulation would be better than what we have today.

Why would you even entertain that thought? When has anything even remotely the size of healthcare been 100% deregulated and successful? Why go for such far out nonsense like this when there are perfectly good examples of successful healthcare models in other countries.

> When has anything even remotely the size of healthcare been 100% deregulated and successful

Plenty. The electronics market huge and barely regulated. The hardware for smartphones are cheap and amazing, televisions, etc. Automobiles are huge and relatively unregulated. It's not a great comparison, but your question was bad.

The size of the industry has nothing to do with whether or not it should be regulated.

The reason to entertain this thought it because deregulation is part of the solution to high health care costs.

Re: Bringing transparency to ER prices, one hospital bill at a time

#118

Post by trumped »

dang wrote: post #115
trumped wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You forgot to remove the name from this post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18295942 ... or is Tesla not a name?

It's obviously not a personal name in this context. Nor is any moderation practice absolute. Please don't post frivolous nitpicks.

So if you talk about what a person does, you can't say their name, but if you talk about what a company does, you can? ok, got it. And if it's a known person, you can also say their name. How many exceptions to this "rule"?

ie: "Google paid Andy Rubin $90M while keeping silent about a misconduct claim"

A frivolous rule for lack of a better term...

Re: Bringing transparency to ER prices, one hospital bill at a time

#119

Post by MichaelApproved »

randyrand wrote: post #117
MichaelApproved wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you even entertain that thought? When has anything even remotely the size of healthcare been 100% deregulated and successful? Why go for such far out nonsense like this when there are perfectly good examples of successful healthcare models in other countries.

> When has anything even remotely the size of healthcare been 100% deregulated and successful Plenty. The electronics market huge and barely regulated. The hardware for smartphones are cheap and amazing, televisions, etc. Automobiles are huge and relatively unregulated. It's not a great comparison, but your question was bad. The size of the industry has nothing to do with whether or not it should be regulated. The re…

> electronics market huge and barely regulated.

"Electronics market"?! That's like calling healthcare the "service industry".

> Automobiles are huge and relatively unregulated.

This is laughable. Air bags, seat belts, emissions, break lights, tires, and more. Cars are one of the most regulated industries out there. From how they're built to how they're sold (manufacturer can't own the dealerships).

> It's not a great comparison, but your question was bad.

Your attempt to add something meaningful failed.

Re: Bringing transparency to ER prices, one hospital bill at a time

#120

Post by pokemongoaway »

dang wrote: post #103
shawn wrote: post #100

Actually, when you do things a community member disagrees with, you ban them and say they aren’t really a part of the community. The front page ranking is determined entirely by you. The comment ranking isn't far behind. Credit where credit is due.

None of that is true. Since you either can't or won't stop posting like this, we're not going to unban you after three months, because clearly this problem is just continuing. But if you can go three months without posting any abusive, off-topic, meta comments, we'll consider it. In the meantime, we're continuing to unkill good comments that you post, if the community hasn't vouched for them first. We detached this c…

Typical dang reply... I've demonstrated this many times and offered to email you plenty of evidence that lots of reasonable and credentialed members agree with me. You are the censor here; you are in the wrong. Unless censorship is right, then please support that notion. The reason why you do not support it publicly is because you know that you will lose the debate.

"In the meantime, we're continuing to unkill good comments that you post" -- So you are deciding which comments are good and which are bad. Exactly as I had claimed, and that you had denied. Previously you claimed that the "rules" decided which comments lived & died. Pretty incredible how few of my comments have made it through in the past 3 months, considering that. I am vouching for this comment. And let it be known that I have had many comments vouched for by others that were killed regardless.

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