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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

#241

Post by devicetray0 »

mywittyname wrote: post #129
bloopernova wrote: post #24

I'm being offered $550 by my insurance in "gift cards" if I use certain facilities for any MRIs or other diagnostics. I think that shows just how wildly variable different locations charge, and how much they get away with. I'd love to see a published price list for standard procedures, because I think hospitals have become too used to being cash cows for administrators and CEOs. This isn't to say I think nurses or do…

> This isn't to say I think nurses or doctors are overpaid The probably are. Clearly hospital executives and administrators are raking in most of the money, but we can't sit here and pretend that caregivers don't directly benefit from such an arrangement as well. There's a reason urgent care centers and small clinics pay their doctors less than most of us make, or skip employing doctors at all in favor of nurse pract…

> skip employing doctors at all in favor of nurse practitioners

Hold up. I hope you're not being negative on hiring NPs. As someone who is in favor of NPs (and knows many NPs), they provide excellent primary care and hiring them can help bring down the overall cost of healthcare. I say we should teach and hire MORE NPs to provide cheaper primary and preventative care, not blame clinics for hiring them.

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

#242

Post by pjc50 »

whb07 wrote: post #154
jakobegger wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, you could do what other developed countries do: Don't rely on private for profit hospitals. Here, most hospitals are run either by cities or counties, or by the public insurance companies themselves. This ensures that hospitals have an incentive to be efficient. There are private hospitals, but only very few people go there, since they are very expensive, and you get good care in the public hospitals.

So a quick way to check reality is by looking at behavior, so say you wanted the "best" care for something no matter the costs. Most people would fly to the U.S from wherever. That is telling you something. I agree the "general" care like broken bones etc its probably all the same, but healthcare innovation is done in the U.S. So it is kind of moot to say "its good here"... yes after the innovation trickles its way o…

> say you wanted the "best" care for something no matter the costs.

But what if you don't want to be bankrupt afterwards?

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

#243

Post by SilasX »

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.

If that's actually a requirement, then why are most providers happy to accept that it's me over the phone/at the pharmacy if I simply say I'm Silas and maybe give the right date of birth?

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

#244

Post by TurkishPoptart »

My dad, who is in his late 60s, has about $200k to live off of in his retirement. Provided I outlive him, I have a sneaking suspicion that his savings will not only be siphoned out by whatever hospital system inevitably treats him, but that _I_ will have to cough up the remainder! Granted, this isn't a discussion he and I have had. Just goes to show that if you have some terminal condition in this broken country, it's better to just be hit by a bus or drown, than be "treated" comfortably in a hospital bed for $5k+ a night.

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

#245

Post by tptacek »

digikata wrote: post #213
tptacek wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I believe you, but it's hard to square that ratio with the actual administrative overhead of US health care, which is under 15%.

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

#246

Post by soapboxrocket »

I think the bigger scam is how they break apart the hospital/doctors offices into separate companies. Now I'm not complaining how I go from one building to get blood drawn and a different building for the emergency department.

I'm complaining how I walk across the hallway in my doctors walled garden inside the building but when I enter that room, in his area, and get an x-ray that is a completely different company that bills me separately and I have to pay a different co-pay to.

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

#247

Post by noelsusman »

mavhc wrote: post #212
noelsusman wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes, that is possible, and some do that. In practice, HIPAA is pretty complicated and email is more of a dark gray area than a hard no. For that reason most providers avoid it and prefer to use dedicated secure messaging systems that have things like consent and auditing built in.

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

#248

Post by soapboxrocket »

TheSoftwareGuy wrote: post #177
legitster wrote: post #8

The previous administration had a similar effort that failed. I hope that this effort is successful. >"For instance, it could allow one provider to follow and match the prices of the other provider (like two gas stations across the street from one another who face no other competition)," Garmon said. I understand this argument, but I think they underrate how much people are willing to shop around when they actually h…

>I understand this argument, but I think they underrate how much people are willing to shop around when they actually have prices to use as a metric. If prices are transparent enough, eventually bored programmers will create websites & other tools that make it super simple to find the lowest cost provider in any non-emergency situation, and probably even emergency situations if you are looking ahead of time

Hell a good program could tell me how much time I have to address said emergency and then give me prices and time to locations for said emergency. I bet people would even be willing to take a bit of risk and drive an extra 10 minutes to save 50% with an increased risk of long term damage of say 10%. In fact, let's start A/B testing that!

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

#249

Post by soapboxrocket »

mc32 wrote: post #240
sigstoat wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is only emergency rooms where I don't get a choice - if you need an emergency room close is important. i feel like the folks on here peddling this line have not ever spent any time watching who comes through an ER. most of the people who go into an ER aren't dying, or screaming in pain. they've just got a problem that can't wait until urgent care opens up again in the morning. or they need something done that ur…

I think lots of people say “ER” for trauma center.

I think lots of people say "ER" for "ED" Emergency Department became the most common term about a decade ago and Emergency Room faded from building guides and hospital documents.

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

#250

Post by tsimionescu »

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…

Maybe, but those (perhaps except the first one) are absolute requirements for a functioning system.

If a market based solution can't work with these restrictions, then the obvious conclusion is that you have to give up on market-based healthcare, not that you have to allow anyone to prescribe medicine, or have hospitals which won't treat dying people because they can't pay.

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