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Medical equipment pricing is completely broken when a sling costs $200

latimes.com

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Re: Medical equipment pricing is completely broken when a sling costs $200

#131

Post by nickjj »

janesvilleseo wrote: post #123
RandomBacon wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you go to a different dentist and eye doctor each time? Also, if you had to go to an emergency room, would you give them fake personal info so they can't send you bills?

I pay my dentist and eye doctors. Those are treated differently. There really isn’t eye insurance and dentists usually have normalish prices compared to other doctors. I mean I can ask my dentist how much it’s going to be and he can actually give me a price before my procedure. But as I stated above the insurance pays their portion so it’s not like nothing is being paid. Just not the 900% markup. I don’t recommend do…

I think one of the reasons why most dentists can give you a straight up price on the spot is because they own the practice which means they are the decision maker when it comes to prices. Plus with a dentist, there's a pretty decent chance you're not dealing with insurance companies. With a hospital you're dealing with a million layers of abstraction at both the hospital and insurance company level.

I'm definitely not defending hospitals and most doctor's offices but I think that plays some part in it. There's also a decent amount of dental competition when it comes to routine work such as cleanings, so prices wind up staying somewhat reasonable where as with a hospital there's no competition really due to how insurance works.

Re: Medical equipment pricing is completely broken when a sling costs $200

#132

Post by bcrosby95 »

awb wrote: post #44

Just to pile on about how ridiculous medical costs are: After giving birth my wife was offered Ibuprofen. On the bill we were charged $80 for the 2 pills she took. This was before Obamacare. After Obamacare I twisted my ankle and the doctors insisted I wear a cheap fabric boot with stiff plastic plates while it healed over the next couple weeks. I asked how much it cost and they said $280. I took it off and refused i…

> I asked how much it cost and they said $280.

I'm shocked they could give you a price. Anytime I ask for a price it takes hours of talking to multiple people spread across several days.

Re: Medical equipment pricing is completely broken when a sling costs $200

#133

Post by inferiorhuman »

zaroth wrote: post #110
rwcemergency wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just got an emergency room bill. I had a severe sore throat and fever for 2 weeks, step tests came back negative. Then at night my back side started hurting so I went to the ER. I paid $850 at the ER and today I received another bill for $850. The only thing on the Bill just says > "Charges": $11,680 > "Adjustmnets: $9,980 I just got off the phone with them and they say that it will take 10 business days to receive…

A couple things you should know. First, there is no such thing as late fees or interest on a hospital bill. Second, if you have called to question the bill, they cannot send it to collections until they have fulfilled your reasonable requests for more information. If you really did just get the bill it will be several months (and several more copies of the bill sent to you) before a final bill would show up that woul…

First, there is no such thing as late fees or interest on a hospital bill.

Sure, just like you can't charge extra for using a credit card in California as payment in most scenarios (you can get a cash discount though). There may not be late fees, but the hospital will absolutely offer to settle for a hefty discount if you pay ASAP.

By the time you get something claiming "PAST DUE" the hospital may be less willing to negotiate.

Re: Medical equipment pricing is completely broken when a sling costs $200

#134

Post by ianmcgowan »

isostatic wrote: post #121

I live in the UK. My father had a stroke a couple of days ago. He’s in intensive care on a ventilator. Total bill so far: £2 parking. Also the coffee machine in the relatives waiting room was out of sugar.

I'm from the UK, but live in the SF Bay Area, and this is the single biggest thing I don't get about the US (with education costs being second). I kind of get the libertarian view of not wanting to trust the government but when the alternative is some kind of Mad Max dystopian hellscape (where people are literally dying), surely looking around the world for alternatives that actually work makes sense?

Re: Medical equipment pricing is completely broken when a sling costs $200

#135

Post by D-Coder »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #116
alexanderdmitri wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our first born came with a $42k bill. Hospital and doctor said we were covered by our insurance pre-auth, but come bill time apparently pre-auth was null and void b/c it was requisite on a negotiation that fell through. Each side had a different story and their representatives acted absolutely helpless. We were broke at the time we found out about the pregnancy and memories of the first two years of my boy's life are…

Why aren’t US citizens queuing up to emigrate? At this stage, it seems like the US is the “land of the free”, whereby “freedom” is defined as the ability to freely exploit everyone.

[flagged]

Re: Medical equipment pricing is completely broken when a sling costs $200

#136

Post by Retric »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #128
Retric wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a common but false talking point. Hospitals with above average Medicare patients generally get paid more than the general population. It’s also a question of what percentage of a nominal bill gets paid vs sent to collections.

Given that it's a common misconception, would you supply some evidence for your position?

Hospitals receive extra payments when they have an unusual number of Medicare patients.

https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/finance/dsh/index.html

It’s just another case where the government splits spending across multiple programs.

Re: Medical equipment pricing is completely broken when a sling costs $200

#137

Post by ianmcgowan »

sangd wrote: post #124

It's not the hospital alone. I went to my Kaiser optometry for my wife's glasses yesterday, and they said it would cost $375 for her pair. Her insurance would cover $175 + $100 discount, and the rest she has to pay. She has a Platinum coverage with Kaiser. We went home and she ordered 5 pairs online for $50. The anti-reflective coating cost $90 at Kaiser, but only $6 online. Fortunately, I don't wear glasses.

Kaiser is actually the best/most European option, if it's available to you. This exact thing happened in my family, but the lesson I took away is being grateful to Kaiser for letting us know the price ahead of time, and all but forcing us to go a different (much cheaper) route for my wife's glasses. Don't hate the player, hate the game, and all that...

Re: Medical equipment pricing is completely broken when a sling costs $200

#138

Post by pg_is_a_butt »

oppositelock wrote: post #86
brink wrote: post #4

I just got an itemized bill today for a minor fall I took a couple months back.. On top of the nearly $6k in other charges from the hospital, they charged $531 for one dab of superglue or "liquid stitches" on my forehead for something that would have healed by itself. One of my friends died two years ago from pneumonia. He didn't go to the hospital when symptoms first started because he was afraid of the bills that w…

I went to the ER with chest pains seeming like a heart attack. They did an EKG, determined it wasn't a heart attack, then a blood test, which determined it was low potassium, and did a chest x-ray just in case. I received a saline IV and potassium pills as treatment, and went home after a couple of hours. The bill was about $18,000 for this. The insurance negotiated rate was about $1,500, of which I had to pay about…

This is what the 2nd amendment is for. Exercise your rights. Fix your country.

Re: Medical equipment pricing is completely broken when a sling costs $200

#139

Post by ianmcgowan »

mdorazio wrote: post #29
narrator wrote: post #21

This is why I like Kaiser so much. If you make it to a Kaiser emergency room, and you have Kaiser health insurance, you are not going to get an out-of-network surprise bill. Everyone at Kaiser works for Kaiser and is paid a salary by Kaiser and the Kaiser hospital is the only one that bills you.

... what if you don't make it to a Kaiser emergency room? The Kaiser system would be great if every major hospital nationwide was under it. Kind of like a national healthcare system...

My wife had an emergency, which ended up with removing one of her ovaries. Kaiser was pretty insistent about transferring her from the closest ER to one of their facilities (which was stressful), but after that the treatment was awesome. After a some major surgery and a few days recovering the bill was completely covered. Kaiser isn't perfect, but they're the closest thing to a reasonable health-care system I've seen in the US. Agree that there are worse models for how to do healthcare, within some of the constraints of the US system.

Re: Medical equipment pricing is completely broken when a sling costs $200

#140

Post by lopmotr »

hurrdurr2 wrote: post #90
oppositelock wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to the ER with chest pains seeming like a heart attack. They did an EKG, determined it wasn't a heart attack, then a blood test, which determined it was low potassium, and did a chest x-ray just in case. I received a saline IV and potassium pills as treatment, and went home after a couple of hours. The bill was about $18,000 for this. The insurance negotiated rate was about $1,500, of which I had to pay about…

The lobby for insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies, and hospital chains spend ungodly amounts of money to influence our political process. Once all the politicians are bought and paid for everything becomes kosher.

For some reason, Americans keep complaining about the same problems with their government over and over again - particularly lobbying, and yet every election they nearly universally reject all their concerns in favor of tribalism and vote for the same two parties that are responsible for everything they don't want, or nobody at all, which has the same effect.

Wouldn't it be fun if whenever somebody criticizes their government, they also state who they voted for to force them to open their eyes to the fact that it's their own fault.

People rationalize it by saying that voting for a 3rd party is "wasting" their vote, but in that sense, voting for anybody is wasting their vote because it never comes down to one individual's vote deciding things. Really they just have two driving forces - allegiance to whatever tribe they randomly found themselves feeling like a part of (and mysteriously agree with all the inconsistent aims of), and wanting to be on the winning team. Healthcare be damned.

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