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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

#331

Post by n00j »

programmertote wrote: post #139
heymijo wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Various doctor associations (AMA et al) have strangled supply side of healthcare To add more details to this here's something I recently read about the supply constraint and its origins. > Then as now, Medicare reimbursed hospitals for a significant share of residents’ salaries. The Balanced Budget Act established limits on those reimbursements, effectively fixing the number of funded residents at 1996 levels. (In…

This a hundred times! The shortage is real and urgent. My gf, who is in her second year of a low-tier residency program, received many offers from various hospitals promising her $300K/year to work for them. This is well known among residents that once you survive residency (which is not a high bar to begin with), you will make at least $250K/year.

Is $250K or 300K really that much compared to the amount of work / time these people need to spend going through formal education? With the additional stress that any decisions they make could adversely impact someone's life?

I mean software developers doing significantly less work can easily make this money while working half as much right? SW Dev working 8hrs a day can make this, whereas a doctor working probable 60-80 hours a week makes the same?

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

#332

Post by robomartin »

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…

Not that simple. This is a multivariate problem including massive student loans, crippling liability/malpractice insurance, regulatory burden and more.

You didn’t get that bill because you just saw a doctor for 5 minutes. You made use of an organization that has a basic cost-per-hour to exist.

This is a simple way to distill what it costs for that entire hospital to be there ready to see your child at whatever random time and day you need them most. That is very different from just seeing a doctor for 5 minutes. What you didn’t see are the hundreds or thousands of people who have to exist for you to be able to get in your car, drive there and see a doctor for 5 minutes.

That’s not to say our costs are not high. They are. Just saying we need to engage in root cause analysis before passing judgment.

Simple example: Our internal machine shop operates at a nominal rate of $200 per hour. That’s what we deem is the cost to utilize that resource. Larger operations can easily have a cost of $2,000 or $20,000 per hour, whether you use the equipment or not.

If you want to lower our healthcare costs, you have to go after real root causes. No amount of insurance scheme manipulation (public option or medicare for all) is going to fix the system until the fundamental structural issues are addressed.

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

#333

Post by fulldecent2 »

If you have a similar story: stop reading, open a court case in small claims court and come back to post about it. You will get all the support you need here from extremely qualified people, including specific filings you should make and also answers to every question you will have.

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

#334

Post by deanCommie »

residentfoam wrote: post #160
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…

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…

> 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?

That is once again a US-centric view. The rest of the world doesn't overpay their programmers to nearly the same degree. It's a comfortable wage. Upper middle class. But the equivalent of "entry-level six figures", not "six figures, then a couple times over beyond that for good measure".

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

#335

Post by cosmie »

np_tedious wrote: post #326
cosmie wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I never received a ding on my credit report. Non-medical and medical collections tend to get different treatment nowadays[1][2]. It may have ended up on your credit but after a super long delay, or it'd disappear entirely if they were able to get something out of your insurance instead. And even if it shows up on your credit report, depending on the specific scoring model being used, it still may not have had much…

Is there any potential for an incident like this without a loan agreement to impact credit history / score?

Technically, anyone that's gone through the process to become a data furnisher can report anything they like to a credit bureau[1]. Although if they can't produce an agreement that denotes your confirmation of the debt or liability to pay for the service, then you can likely get it removed via a dispute.

Which, incidentally, is the same principle behind most "fix your credit" services. They dispute the accuracy and validity of the entries on your report, and if the reporting entity can't produce the appropriate documentation (such as a loan agreement or equivalent), it'll get dropped from your history. And even if it doesn't, while it's actively in dispute it'll be weighted differently by most scoring models[2].

[1] https://smallbusiness.chron.com/report-bad-debt-credit-burea...

[2] https://budgeting.thenest.com/can-disputed-accounts-affect-c...

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

#336

Post by maerF0x0 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #217
maerF0x0 wrote: post #158

This adds to my recent thought stream that it ought to be charge 2 people a different price for the same thing (basket of things) ... Why is it that someone who is a new customer for service X gets a sweetheart deal but those of us who have faithfully paid for months/years are charged a premium? Why is it that 2 people in a hospital pay entirely different prices for the exact same thing? on and on the insanity goes.…

Price discrimination yields the most profit for a seller. You want to be able to capture all that each person is willing to pay, because your cost of goods sold remains the same. Also the new customer doesn’t permanently get a sweetheart deal, it’s always a temporary incentive to join, which doesn’t seem unfair to me at all. However, as a buyer, if you’re not always shopping around, expect to pay more than someone wh…

> That’s just how the game works.

I agree that you're talking about an optimal analysis of the current game.

However, one of the roles of government is to alter games which are suboptimal for society. For example cartels are illegal despite them being optimal for the sellers.

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

#337

Post by rpmisms »

jopsen wrote: post #104
rpmisms wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's extremely cool, and has my gears turning about how to encourage that kind of behavior.

If the x-ray is better in any way, it's not wise to recommend anything else. It's better to ensure that the very treatment is affordable

Or perhaps leaping to the most invasive possible diagnostic isn't ideal.

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

#338

Post by LyndsySimon »

mxcrossb wrote: post #277
nonbel wrote: post #38

It has been good practice for awhile now to claim you have no insurance even if you do: https://selfpaypatient.com/2015/05/12/insured-but-not-lettin... Once you know the cash price then you could later say you got insurance but not vice versa.

It seems like someone could start an insurance company, where all customers had to claim they had no insurance, but then sent the bill to be reimbursed.

"Medishare" programs work this way.

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

#339

Post by krooj »

aj7 wrote: post #303
dpq wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically it would be cheaper to fly to Canada (/Europe/Russia/where er) for $500 roundtrip and get an EKG for $100 there. You know something's weird when this is what a better solution looks like.

My ex-wife regularly scheduled medical checkups in Korea. For $1500, they did very extensive tests and examinations, all in an 8-hour day.

Steep for DPRK

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

#340

Post by GFischer »

n00j wrote: post #331
programmertote wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This a hundred times! The shortage is real and urgent. My gf, who is in her second year of a low-tier residency program, received many offers from various hospitals promising her $300K/year to work for them. This is well known among residents that once you survive residency (which is not a high bar to begin with), you will make at least $250K/year.

Is $250K or 300K really that much compared to the amount of work / time these people need to spend going through formal education? With the additional stress that any decisions they make could adversely impact someone's life? I mean software developers doing significantly less work can easily make this money while working half as much right? SW Dev working 8hrs a day can make this, whereas a doctor working probable 6…

I don´t know in which world you live where SW devs make that... some FAANG developers maybe - 5.000 to 10.000 people total? Compare to over a million doctors in the U.S. only.
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