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Hospitals pledge to fight admin price transparency plan in court

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Re: Hospitals pledge to fight admin price transparency plan in court

#211

Post by wavepruner »

braythwayt wrote: post #46
wavepruner wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are lots of sick people who want to know how much their treatment options cost. Not just Americans, but Canadians as well (I know some). When you have a poorly understood illness that is killing you you have two choices: pay out of pocket or die. It doesn't matter if your country has universal health care or not because treatments will not be covered until they go through a lengthy (decades) approval process. I…

I have empathy for where you're coming from, but to me it feel like the following: Imagine that in America, husbands are allowed to beat their wives, and the government proposes a law that they may not use a stick with a girth bigger than their thumb. Alice says, "This is insane. Husbands are not allowed to beat their wives in Canada, that is the correct solution." And then Bob says, "Well, that's just unrealistic he…

Did you read my entire post? Universal health care does not solve the problem. Canadians that have my illness have just as much difficulty as I do. I swear you kinds of healthy people do not even read/listen to the words that I and other crippled people say.

Your analogy is not even remotely appropriate.

And how is open pricing incompatible with universal health care? Is your ideology so important to you that you will fight such an innocuous change?

Re: Hospitals pledge to fight admin price transparency plan in court

#212

Post by mavhc »

noelsusman wrote: post #124
mavhc wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So only send it to email services that support TLS, ie 99% of them

Not secure in the sense that it's encrypted, though that's part of it. Secure in the sense that you know you're communicating with the patient and only the patient, not their spouse, or their grandson, or Google's servers.

Can't people just put in their email address, verify it by sending an email, and agree that that they're fine with that?

Re: Hospitals pledge to fight admin price transparency plan in court

#213

Post by digikata »

tptacek wrote: post #207
digikata wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prices for care in Japan are basically systematically set by government committees. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_system_in_Japan In contrast, in the US, there are 16 non-medical, mostly billing personnel per doctor.

Where does that figure come from?

Its from a book, Code Blue: Inside Americas Medical Industrial Complex, by Mike Magee. The author is a Doctor and distinguished medical academic and past hospital executive.

Re: Hospitals pledge to fight admin price transparency plan in court

#214

Post by Red_Leaves_Flyy »

digikata wrote: post #205
Berobero wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in Japan two years ago; got pneumonia and needed antibiotics. Went to a hospital with no insurance and no appointment. I was being seen by a doctor within 30 minutes. Doctor wanted to do some additional labs just to rule other things out, but he was worried that it would be expensive for me given the lack of insurance. He called up billing with me still in the room and had a price within a couple minutes: ~$70…

Prices for care in Japan are basically systematically set by government committees. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_system_in_Japan In contrast, in the US, there are 16 non-medical, mostly billing personnel per doctor.

Can you cite that number? Even pulling numbers out of thin air for receptions, call center, it, hospitality, food, nursing, etc I find it hard to get thathigh.

This study puts the billing staff to doctors ratio at 0.67.

https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.28.4....

Re: Hospitals pledge to fight admin price transparency plan in court

#215

Post by wetpaws »

AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #135
Miner49er wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we could just make healthcare a human right. No debt at all.

It's an interesting question. Health care is a human right. Therefore it must be free. A prompt and fair trial is also a human right. Therefore legal help must be free. Moving around, staying warm and basic hygiene - a lot of stuff sound like basic human rights, but very few argue that transportation, heating and sewer draining services should be free. I think most people around don't mind paying for the service. The…

I don't see any contradiction in what you are saying. Yes, they are rights and should be free.

They are not right now, but that's because we are operating in a world of a limited resources, but not because it is a right state of thing.

Re: Hospitals pledge to fight admin price transparency plan in court

#216

Post by [deleted] »

bluGill wrote: post #110
abootstrapper wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You can trade Obama and Trump in the above and get an idea of how a lot of people feel. The truth is in the middle, nobody is perfect, nobody is pure evil. But once you choose a side you find it hard to see any good in the other. (I often recognize and fight the problem in myself - with no idea how often I miss it)

[deleted]

Re: Hospitals pledge to fight admin price transparency plan in court

#217

Post by [deleted] »

sol_remmy2 wrote: post #131
madamelic wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Hard to grasp how a huge power like the US can't get itself around decently-priced healthcare. To be honest, it's not that hard to figure out. The US gov't largely believes itself is ineffective and needs to be privatized and ran like a business. Private businesses are held up as beacons of innovation and efficiency without the "red tape" the gov't has due to purposefully created checks, balances and regulations. He…

> The US gov't largely believes itself is ineffective and needs to be privatized and ran like a business. Private businesses are held up as beacons of innovation and efficiency without the "red tape" the gov't has due to purposefully created checks, balances and regulations. The medical system is really not private. It is a hybrid of a state-controlled system and a capitalistic system. Here are some ways of how the s…

[deleted]

Re: Hospitals pledge to fight admin price transparency plan in court

#218

Post by vonmoltke »

KukicAdnan wrote: post #88
swebs wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crazy, that's the price you would have paid at Minute Clinic without insurance. https://www.cvs.com/minuteclinic/services/price-lists

Yep. I don't mind paying the $116, but the disparity in pricing is so ridiculous. It's like throwing darts at a board and saying "Pay us this much"

The "discounts" shown on my explanations of benefits are absurd. My current record is a 94% "discount" from list price for a particular test.

Re: Hospitals pledge to fight admin price transparency plan in court

#219

Post by Shivetya »

XG6 wrote: post #14

Of course doctors and hospitals don't want price transparency. That would create pricing competition, which would drive down consumer prices, lower profit margins, and force them to become more efficient. Price transparency is one of the key elements of the highly successful Singapore healthcare system. Add in universal tax-free (or tax-deferred) Health Savings Accounts, and we could not only improve the US healthcar…

Indiana funds the HSA deductible on their plans and saw a good deal of savings. Combine this with price transparency and health care costs could and should fall and do so rapidly.

however the biggest obstacle to health care reform and cost reduction are the federal and state governments. in particular CON (Certificate of Need), thirty plus states still have these which are used to block new hospitals and other care facilities. the ACA banned new Doctor owned hospitals in a further move to protect the big hospitals; the CON law at Federal level was done away with in 87.

People need to have skin in the game. This means that prices must be revealed as well as handing control over to patients where how the money is spent. So HSA with paid deductibles can save states a large amount of money and help people make better decisions. with preventative treatments normally being free and people seeing hsa money rolls over and its theirs it really changes how people behave.

the US should have great health care but the government is stuck in VA for all mode and that is the charge being led by current candidates. Look at it this way, the VA system has been a wreck for decades and if Congress cannot or will not fix that why should you trust them to take over what we have now?

Re: Hospitals pledge to fight admin price transparency plan in court

#220

Post by prklmn »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #201
prklmn wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You compare hip replacement quality by asking what the center's/surgeons complication rate is. How many are they having to go back and redo, a revision as they call it. It would be nice if these rates were publicly accessible in a easy to search database. As it stands now, hospitals market themselves on size, volume, and fancy buildings all of which don't mean much compared to complication rates.

> It would be nice if these rates were publicly accessible in a easy to search database. That will make surgeons avoid complicated cases due to the risk of failure and its consequences for their careers.

They already do that
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