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Insured price $2,758, cash price $521

latimes.com

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Re: Insured price $2,758, cash price $521

#251

Post by PorterDuff »

OrgNet wrote: post #100
johnwheeler wrote: post #25

I took my 4 year old to the ER because he had a 103 fever. The doctor put an ear thermometer to him and told me to give him some childrens ibuprofen. The visit lasted all of 5 minutes. The cost: $756.00. I refused to pay it. It was the first time I did not pay a debt and the first time I was sent to collections. I refused based on principle, and not because I couldn’t afford it. Collections called me for about 3 mont…

with my insurance, it cost you about the same for healthcare whether you are insured or not... (not including the insurance costs or government fines for lack of insurance)... mainly because they give a discount to the uninsured....

Dunno if that's strictly true.

A story. Emergency room visit for moi (super high BP plus PVC that appeared out of nowhere). They hook up an EKG machine, wait an hour, tell me to see my doctor. Since it was a heart thing, I got bumped to the head of the line but forget to fork over my insurance card.

Bill #1 $10k from hospital $2.5k from ER physician

Bill #2 $4k if I pay it right away in cash

Bill #3 $500 (deductible cost) once the insurance people are brought into the picture.

Re: Insured price $2,758, cash price $521

#252

Post by epmaybe »

caraffle wrote: post #220
programmertote wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finally, someone said this. It's very rare to see putting some blame on doctors for such exorbitant medical prices in the US. I have made several comments about that on HN describing similar observation that I found. A recent example was when I went to see a doctor for ear infection. She put a otoscope in my ear, looked at it for one minute, prescribed me some anti-bacterial, and wrote up $250 for the service. The fi…

There's a lot wrong with the medical field, but this is a ridiculous argument. Programming is hard, medicine is hard. But it's in different ways - it's definitely not transposable (obviously- you switched the other way). I say that as someone who worked in FAANG software and is now in medicine. Equating salary to mental load is also factitious. Manual laborers work harder than all of us, maybe we should switch salari…

I discussed the funding in my comment above, in that medicare funding is only part of the problem. Nothing would stop a hospital from paying for resident training so long as the ACGME gave their blessing.

Re: Insured price $2,758, cash price $521

#254

Post by austhrow743 »

JudgeWapner wrote: post #239
programmertote wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finally, someone said this. It's very rare to see putting some blame on doctors for such exorbitant medical prices in the US. I have made several comments about that on HN describing similar observation that I found. A recent example was when I went to see a doctor for ear infection. She put a otoscope in my ear, looked at it for one minute, prescribed me some anti-bacterial, and wrote up $250 for the service. The fi…

> the physicians who treat garden-variety diseases can be trained much less expensively. So, how do you make sure that only garden variety patients see the medical assistant, while seriously sick ones or those who have only telltale signs of a 1-10k illness see the real doctor? If those rare ones don't get to the doc they die.

You accept that a greater number of people with a 1-10k illness die than whatever the current rate is.

Re: Insured price $2,758, cash price $521

#255

Post by PorterDuff »

rpmisms wrote: post #7
devoply wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Why are insurance companies not demanding cash price and reducing premiums? There should be lawsuits against hospitals, this seems like something which is generally considered highly illegal at this sort of scale... charging different customers different prices -- especially when the ones paying more are more than capable of taking hospitals to court.

I'm a generally anti-legislation kind of person, but as long as breaking up big tech is a hot topic, why not pass a bill requiring cash prices for any not-for-profit insurance providers and co-pay networks? There's a lot of interesting competition happening in those spaces, and making not-for-profit insurance a better deal seems like a great way to get capitalism grinding at the issue of overpriced healthcare.

I would prefer a system where they charge everyone the same amount. It wouldn't surprise me if the insurance companies would be in favor of that, the whole price negotiation overhead goes out the window.

Re: Insured price $2,758, cash price $521

#256

Post by programmertote »

JudgeWapner wrote: post #239
programmertote wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finally, someone said this. It's very rare to see putting some blame on doctors for such exorbitant medical prices in the US. I have made several comments about that on HN describing similar observation that I found. A recent example was when I went to see a doctor for ear infection. She put a otoscope in my ear, looked at it for one minute, prescribed me some anti-bacterial, and wrote up $250 for the service. The fi…

> the physicians who treat garden-variety diseases can be trained much less expensively. So, how do you make sure that only garden variety patients see the medical assistant, while seriously sick ones or those who have only telltale signs of a 1-10k illness see the real doctor? If those rare ones don't get to the doc they die.

It is already happening. NYU Langone has been pushing hard on people to 'see' the doctors online for small stuff like allergies and fever. I wouldn't be surprised if this practice eventually extends to replacing doctors with a semi-automated (human-computer based) system .

For what is worth, a physician assistant can diagnose quickly (and they can be assisted with a ML/rule-based diagnosis system that is trained on something like "Pocket Medicine: The Massachusetts General Hospital", which is what most doctors in training use as a handbook) and escalate the difficult ones to the specialist doctors.

Re: Insured price $2,758, cash price $521

#257

Post by asperous »

mettamage wrote: post #167
residentfoam wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have mixed feelings about this. As society, we seem to be ok with millennials fresh out of college making hundreds of thousands of $$$ a year for a bunch Javascript that allows people to share pictures of their butt with their friends BUT we are not ok with doctors who literally - save lives - getting paid according to their responsibilities? Same goes with football/basketball/etc.. players whose sole purpose in li…

Don't worry, that's only the in the US. In Switzerland, for example, many people are paid a lot. They also pay a lot. In The Netherlands, psychiatrists have a higher entry level salary than the average CS grad.

From what I understand psychiatrists are one of the highest paying professions

Re: Insured price $2,758, cash price $521

#258

Post by igivanov »

johnwheeler wrote: post #25

I took my 4 year old to the ER because he had a 103 fever. The doctor put an ear thermometer to him and told me to give him some childrens ibuprofen. The visit lasted all of 5 minutes. The cost: $756.00. I refused to pay it. It was the first time I did not pay a debt and the first time I was sent to collections. I refused based on principle, and not because I couldn’t afford it. Collections called me for about 3 mont…

In Canada it looks equally expensive if you don't have insurance (e.g. a non resident).

http://www.david-cummings.com/documents/canadian_hospital_ra...

You pay CAD750-800 for an ER visit if they just take a look at you.

Re: Insured price $2,758, cash price $521

#259

Post by ceejayoz »

roywiggins wrote: post #103
ceejayoz wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you can pull down those numbers being a city manager Where? NYC's mayor doesn't even make those numbers.

There are NYC employees making 350k salaries. https://data.cityofnewyork.us/City-Government/Citywide-Payro...

The three making $350k are the folks running the pension funds, a job that'd be easily earning them a million plus on Wall Street.

The public sector's pensions have always been a bit of compensation for the sub-market salaries. This bears that out.

Re: Insured price $2,758, cash price $521

#260

Post by Negitivefrags »

zanny wrote: post #211
mrep wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As society, we seem to be ok with millennials fresh out of college making hundreds of thousands of $$$ a year for a bunch Javascript that allows people to share pictures of their butt with their friends BUT we are not ok with doctors who literally - save lives - getting paid according to their responsibilities? Programmers only make that because the services they build are extremely scalable, profitable, and wanted…

What gets me at the end of the day is that almost the entire institution that makes programming "valuable" is wholly fictitious and socially constructed. Without institutional international copyright and IP protection the vast majority of software produced would not generate nearly as much revenue per developer hour as it does today. The entire industry is basically an accident caused by greedy corporations extending…

What copyrights do Google and Amazon rely on to stay a monopoly?

Actually, it feels like with everything hosted server side these days there really isn't a lot of benefit to IP protection to tech companies. Media companies yes, tech companies not really.

Even if all of googles source code was stolen today, and it was legal for people to use it, would that really change anything for google?

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