41–50 of 390 posts
My guess is that eventually the govt will step in and start regulating prices if providers don’t. One interesting idea (not well thought out at all) would say that all prices need to be +\- 50% of what Medicare pays. Medicare pays $20,000 for stent placement? Great! You can charge whatever you want up to $30,000. A lot of effort goes into setting Medicare rates (and they are based on self reported costs across the co…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're implying that both the quality of care and the amount of medical research done is a result of the profits of the medical companies. I'm not sure that this is the case.
Profit is the only thing that drives investment in care and research. You’re asserting that you can reduce profits via price fixing and still deliver the same outcomes in both care and research.
If you refer to the professionals’ compensations that’s correct, but not that useful as it applies to all of the adult working population.
If you’re referring to the capital accumulation of investments in healthcare companies, you’re off the mark, as there are several examples that falsify your statement, even in the US
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you look at healthcare vs GDP, the US is way above the line compared to comparable countries. https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-... I think scaling the average costs from other countries accounting for GDP would be a good way to set the rates.
Please. You cannot be serious. Are you really saying that pricing in the US healthcare system is so broken that the only way to set prices is to take other countries prices and convert them?
In fact, the US could improve a lot of basic services if it looked at what other developed countries (OECD) are delivering, and for how much, and made those targets for the next lets say ~10 years.
After those 10 years of bringing the US more into line with the best countries in the world, it should strive to do even better.
Or, alternatively, the US can keep falling further behind.
This is an important distinction, IMO, because I have seen people saying that this is an important step because "insurance/patients can now negotiate easier with a set price list". The issue with this is that, like mentioned above, the public has already had access to these price lists, so this new rule changes nothing in that regard.
The new rule might make it easier for insurance companies or those collecting pricing information to scrape the price data from the hospitals' websites, which is a good thing, but overall I think this new rule is being overblown in terms of the actual impact it will have.
My guess is that eventually the govt will step in and start regulating prices if providers don’t. One interesting idea (not well thought out at all) would say that all prices need to be +\- 50% of what Medicare pays. Medicare pays $20,000 for stent placement? Great! You can charge whatever you want up to $30,000. A lot of effort goes into setting Medicare rates (and they are based on self reported costs across the co…
If you look at healthcare vs GDP, the US is way above the line compared to comparable countries. https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-... I think scaling the average costs from other countries accounting for GDP would be a good way to set the rates.
In all OECD countries, unfortunately, healthcare spending doesn't seem to be especially correlated with increased lifespace.
The next logical step is to require written estimates in advance, just like the auto repair industry.
My guess is that eventually the govt will step in and start regulating prices if providers don’t. One interesting idea (not well thought out at all) would say that all prices need to be +\- 50% of what Medicare pays. Medicare pays $20,000 for stent placement? Great! You can charge whatever you want up to $30,000. A lot of effort goes into setting Medicare rates (and they are based on self reported costs across the co…
If you look at healthcare vs GDP, the US is way above the line compared to comparable countries. https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-... I think scaling the average costs from other countries accounting for GDP would be a good way to set the rates.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is one of those nice ideas that has some pretty serious hidden costs. You’d struggle to compare healthcare in the US to other countries, because the quality of healthcare available (talking about availability, not accessibility) in the US is generally superior to other countries. So you could end up simply eroding the quality of care in the US. Another thing people tend not to talk about when discussing healthca…
I disagree from personal experience. Location of where you are in the US matters. I'm in Montreal right now and the mental healthcare here is superior than what I experienced in the US in Michigan (majority of my life). I would even go as far to write the mental healthcare in USA, which I received ruined my life. If only I had the pleasure of what is available in Canada for my whole life.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you look at healthcare vs GDP, the US is way above the line compared to comparable countries. https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-... I think scaling the average costs from other countries accounting for GDP would be a good way to set the rates.
This is one of those nice ideas that has some pretty serious hidden costs. You’d struggle to compare healthcare in the US to other countries, because the quality of healthcare available (talking about availability, not accessibility) in the US is generally superior to other countries. So you could end up simply eroding the quality of care in the US. Another thing people tend not to talk about when discussing healthca…
The US was rather a shock for me. Costs were mind-boggling, and most physicians struck me as jerks. At least, the male ones did, and they predominated. Nurses, on the other hand, generally seemed OK.
Somehow the US healthcare system seems to attract jerks for physicians, and they seem to be mostly in it for the money. Not all of them, obviously. But enough to set the standard.
I have no clue how that happened. Or how to reverse it.
Edit: Some might ask why being "in it for the money" is bad. I mean, that's what "free enterprise" is about, isn't it? But think about it. Is it OK for priests/minster/rabbis to be "in it for the money"? Or politicians? I hope not. And then, why physicians?
I take issue with this headline. Hospital prices are already , by law, public in the US. The new rule makes it required to post them online , whereas previously you might have to call/email the hospital to get the price list rather than looking at their website. This is an important distinction, IMO, because I have seen people saying that this is an important step because "insurance/patients can now negotiate easier…
If the prices were available through a centralized third party (government health agency or similar) then sure, it's not much of a difference, but if the only way before was by directly contacting the hospitals, then it being available online is a big difference in the actual "public" nature of the information.
Also, calling or writing snail mail to multiple individual hospitals for price lists is a barrier in 2018 that not only dissuades, but is possibly physically not viable for affected people.
In my opinion, being posted online is rightfully the baseline for information to be considered "publicly available" (but probably not sufficient) today.
My heuristic is if you can't find out a piece of information by visiting a public library within 5-10 minutes, it's not public information.