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

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

#341

Post by hurrdurr2 »

lopmotr wrote: post #140
hurrdurr2 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

I'm just saying we need to figure out how to change the lobbying process to not allow these big players (e.g. conglomerates) to influence the political process so much. However, I do agree with you that our country has descended into tribalism not seen before, which undoubtedly helps the folks who want to undermine our democratic process.

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

#342

Post by kwhitefoot »

com2kid wrote: post #310
alexanderdmitri wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Conjecture is silly when there's good data to be had. The number one cause of bankruptcy in the United States: > "medical expenses"[0] The average amount charged for an ER visit in the United States: > between 2008 and 2017, the average price of hospital ER visits rose 135 percent, from $393 to $924[1] The cost of an ambulance ride in the United States: > $164/mile[2] And make sure to compound the monetary cost with…

ER visits at 924 are still far below the stories in this thread of 4-5 digit $ visits for simple issues. The OOP is still averaging under 300, again, not the horror stories in this thread. Problems exist, but it seems that only a small % of providers are horribly abusing the system. (of course a small % across over 300 million people is still a lot of harm!)

USD 900 for an ER visit is a horror story too. Where does someone without savings get that kind of money from? At least it seems difficult for many: https://money.cnn.com/2018/05/22/pf/emergency-expenses-house...

I don't live in the US and I'm not American so perhaps I'm missing some information.

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

#343

Post by ClayShentrup »

harshreality wrote: post #180
lopmotr wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law Without a switch to range voting, approval voting, or one of the condorcet variants, the party system will remain broken into two corrupt halves.

Condorcet won't work.

http://scorevoting.net/NESD

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

#344

Post by pnutjam »

nickjj wrote: post #131
janesvilleseo wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 no…

I always use dental insurance and always get a price before a procedure, and I have six kids.

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

#345

Post by coreyoconnor »

wbronitsky wrote: post #43
coreyoconnor wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC prior to being treated you agree to be financially liable for the costs. Prior to even knowing that that will be or even the costs involved. Or even if you know what is involved are you going to understand what a reasonable cost is? EG: Sling is easy but what about a x-ray study? Is that 200$ or $150? Just like a proper capitalist system! You know, like when you agreed to pay whatever for your iPhone prior to ev…

I'm not sure what your argument is. Is it that it is fine that our healthcare is like shopping at an Apple store? Or that medical costs cannot be predicted? Or that we should be happy with the system we have? Other than pedantry, what are you trying to get across?

Given the responses I succeeded in my goal: highlighting the absurdity in the current system :)

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

#346

Post by coreyoconnor »

inetknght wrote: post #32
coreyoconnor wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC prior to being treated you agree to be financially liable for the costs. Prior to even knowing that that will be or even the costs involved. Or even if you know what is involved are you going to understand what a reasonable cost is? EG: Sling is easy but what about a x-ray study? Is that 200$ or $150? Just like a proper capitalist system! You know, like when you agreed to pay whatever for your iPhone prior to ev…

> You know, like when you agreed to pay whatever for your iPhone prior to even know it'll work. I can contact Apple for help with any issues I have with my iPhone. I can contact my carrier for any issues I have with my iPhone. I can return my iPhone within a grace period if I don't like it. Try doing any of that for medical costs.

For fun I do this: I ask them how much it'll cost upfront. (they can rarely even give bounds). Ask about refund policy (?!?!?!). Tho must be done nicely as the person handling the questions is no way responsible for the absurdity.

I know these won't actually succeed in adding a bit of capitalism but it does succeed in highlighting the absurdity.

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

#347

Post by IggleSniggle »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #289
IggleSniggle wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Company provided insurance, only cost us $5k to have a healthy pregnancy followed by a healthy baby, with no special circumstances. This was the usual “negotiated” cost. Why not print $2mil for a yearly wellness check while you’re at it, and then give a generous 1.9mil discount? The whole system is absolutely positively bonkers. How much of my premium is going to professional negotiators for insurance, and how much o…

Not much. Your premium is going towards paying for the $1M NICU cases where it takes extreme interventions and the $1M/month hemophilia patients. Even a population of a small state like Iowa can have problems distributing costs like that. https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/health/2017/05/...

I think distributing the costs is entirely reasonable; warranted, even. That is, after all, why insurance works at all. Distributing the cost by inflating receipts is, no matter how altruistic or “necessary” you may think it to be, a fraud.

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

#348

Post by com2kid »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #342
com2kid wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ER visits at 924 are still far below the stories in this thread of 4-5 digit $ visits for simple issues. The OOP is still averaging under 300, again, not the horror stories in this thread. Problems exist, but it seems that only a small % of providers are horribly abusing the system. (of course a small % across over 300 million people is still a lot of harm!)

USD 900 for an ER visit is a horror story too. Where does someone without savings get that kind of money from? At least it seems difficult for many: https://money.cnn.com/2018/05/22/pf/emergency-expenses-house... I don't live in the US and I'm not American so perhaps I'm missing some information.

It needs to be fixed, but a $900 average that includes $200 charges for a $25 "medical boot" and charges for a $30 bandaid sounds like it may be not too hard to reduce costs across the entire board.

If the average ER visit was 5K of unknown miscellaneous charges than that would indicate nationwide maliciousness on the part of nearly all hospitals. If only a small # of hospitals are engaging in that level of unfair billing, then they can possibly be investigated one by one.

It is the same thing as "we have thousands servers that are crashing at random multiple times a day" versus "we have a bunch of servers that are low on RAM, and a couple servers that crash 5 times a day."

Neither scenario is good to be in, but it is possible to get a hand on the latter scenario, while in the first scenario a "burn it all down and rewrite" fix might be appropriate.

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

#349

Post by sarcasmOrTears »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #296
sarcasmOrTears wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not libertarian. The US system is cronyism, statism at its finest, possibly illegal. Honestly, I think with current US laws and a willing political force, a lot of top players in the current US healthcare system could be punished, even with the death penalty (especially if reinstated at the federal level). Dreams aside, in order to have a free market healthcare, which is what informed libertarians want, you need…

A functioning market is one where multiple market participants exist (both buyers and sellers) and both are able to make educated choices. How can a market like this exist when the buyer is incapacitated, not to mention even when not incapacitated, the buyer is not sufficiently educated to understand what they are buying?

You could buy the services of an expert in medical decision-making who will negotiate for you when you're incapacitated.

Also, supposedly people aren't total dicks. At the moment the healthcare industry rewards a lot of psychos due to its incentives. Hopefully with a free market the dicks would be weeded out due to increased choices. Also having a free market means that there would be an incentive to make medicine more accessible, while still correct, because more people could be willing to become healers, maybe specialized healers. Who knows, what's certain is that we have not discovered the full potential of humans healing other humans and the current regulations are a big brake on new systems and innovations.

So, for now I'm ok with the whole single-payer/universal healthcare deal.

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

#350

Post by mgkimsal »

habosa wrote: post #181

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…

semi-seriously wondering if you could claim your sincerely held religious beliefs prevented you from entering a binding contract without knowing the terms/cost of such a contract. would your religious beliefs trump their position?
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