271–280 of 370 posts
What if we had a service that would take your itemized bill and spit out the fair market prices. Then, you would tell the hospital/doctor/insurance that you would pay this price and nothing more.
If enough people did that, could it actually work?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
So how do you justify to your family that you are voting for someone who will reduce availability of very specialized treatment for them (those boutique doctors), so some random people you've never heard of can have better care "on average"? Becuase that's where I get stuck.
Specialized care is not synonymous with boutique care. We have a robust research and development economy in the US that will continue to exist without the perverse incentives of private insurance.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
People can think our system is awful and still not want the European one.
What system do you want?
Second, I would require that all medical products and services must have their prices acknowledged by the consumer before service is rendered. Obviously there would have to be some exceptions for extreme medical emergencies, but emergency care only makes up about 1% of healthcare costs, so that can slide.
I would disband medical unions such as the AMA, which spent decades artificially limiting supply of medical workers to keep wages sky high.
I would ban employer provided health insurance, decoupling healthcare from employment.
I would attempt to reshape the health insurance industry to actually work like insurance instead of total coverage. If you get the sniffles, just pay the market rate to visit the NP at the CVS minute clinic, get your antibiotic or whatever, and be on your way. Insurance should not be involved in that, and should be reserved for major medical emergencies or serious conditions like cancer.
I would have serious patent reform, moving pharmaceuticals to generics at a faster rate, and expedite FDA certification for generics. I would work to create a system of partner countries for healthcare certification. If your drug is approved in France, you get a greatly expedited process in the US and vice versa.
If those things didn't dramatically bring down the price of healthcare to a reasonable rate, then I'd consider some socialization of risk.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
That’s not necessarily true. They would rather get something than nothing.
Who said anything about getting nothing? If the hospital sells your debt to a collection agency they get something. If the hospital deals with it in house they can act like UVA[1] and sue you to garnish your wages or take out a lien on your property. Playing chicken with the hospital billing department is a bad way to deal with medical debt.
1: https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/uva-has-ruined-us-heal...
If healthcare costs are so astronomically high, why are so many Americans supportive of mandatory insurance that forces insurance companies to pay those prices? It sounds as bizarre. It's like if a normal pair of shoes cost $1000, and people decided shoes are a right and everyone should subsidize each other's $1000 shoes. How about fixing the root problem first: a pair of regular shoes shouldn't cost a thousand dolla…
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…
For many procedures, we’ve just been avoiding going to the doctors. Doctors have been a hit and miss too. Most really don’t know what they’re talking about.
I’m kinda hopeful that someone will really commoditize common procedures and checks and will make them dirt cheap. May be amazon. Can’t say.
But shit like LapCorp and a whole swath of vulture physicians and insurance companies need to die.
US healthcare is really fucked up.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Specialized care is not synonymous with boutique care. We have a robust research and development economy in the US that will continue to exist without the perverse incentives of private insurance.
Is that why people from all over the world come to USA for cancer care, against all costs?
Specialized illnesses don’t discriminate by class. Those without means don’t receive the care they need. We are fighting so that the system centers that care instead of revolving around a third party private payer that has every incentive to deny that care.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If any other business tried billing people like hospitals and doctors do, people would go to prison.
At least if it was an inelastic good like health care. Gas goes up a quarter and elected officials are thrown out of office. $600 for a drop of super glue? Okay then.
And that of course is part of the problem. Medical billing is like playing numberwang or who's line is it anyway. No two numbers on a bill seem to be correlated in any way to another except as upper or lower bounds.
When someone without coverage comes in then, they have to play that stupid game with all the numbers, and of course they either ignore it and go into debt, pay the cash price if they're able, or they manage to negotiate it down by orders of magnitude - proving the price didn't matter anyway.
My girlfriend fell skiing and tore her ACL. We were taken down to the mountainside clinic. They were just gonna do a basic check and give her some Advil and a brace. I asked how much it would cost. They said they were not ALLOWED to tell me. Which is different than not knowing. I told them what insurance I had. They said many people came in with that insurance. I asked how much of the procedure is normally covered. A…
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…