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Congress is set to ban most surprise medical bills

nytimes.com

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Re: Congress is set to ban most surprise medical bills

#361

Post by mjcarden »

lostapathy wrote: post #228
cogman10 wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me, that sort of proves a point. Cancer and other disease are extremely expensive to treat and fairly common in the population. Yet, somehow, emergency care which is a minority of health costs, eats up 10% of the spending. Anyone that's been to an emergency room knows how excessive the price gouging going on there is. Pills that cost $0.10 OTC (or less!) routinely see 100x markup. That same pill can cost anywhere…

It also doesn't help how insurance handles ER visits. I was in the ER earlier this year. Had an ultrasound done and a BUNCH of labs. $500 copay for the whole visit and insurance eats the rest - regardless of where I am on my deductible. I'd had the exact same ultrasound done "routinely" 2 days prior, at the same hospital, and similar lab the week before.. I had to pay about $1,300 for the privilege because that all f…

I also had an emergency hospital visit a few months ago. Multiple X-Rays, a CT scan, two surgeries and innumerable drugs. I don't have health insurance. Cost to me? Zero.

But then I live in Australia.

Re: Congress is set to ban most surprise medical bills

#362

Post by mehrdadn »

learc83 wrote: post #243
umvi wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why can't a hospital tell me how much an xray costs then? If I come in with a broken arm, why can't they tell me how much it will cost to get it xrayed yet the dentist can do the exact same thing with a broken tooth?

A dentist office is more comparable to an urgent care clinic than a hospital. And in many cases an urgent care clinic can tell you what simple procedures will cost. There are imaging services companies that can tell you upfront how much diagnostic tests are going to cost as well. A broken tooth is a much less complex injury than a broken arm. In many cases you don't even need to be a dentist to diagnose it. Try walki…

I don't understand how this answers the question about X-ray cost.

Re: Congress is set to ban most surprise medical bills

#363

Post by arcticbull »

unishark wrote: post #359
arcticbull wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, I've only got one goalpost. To express that healthcare cannot be a free market. This was a digression and exploration of how your specific situation exists because of government intervention. The alternative is to let poor people die outside, and that's distasteful to me, and to most.

No the poor received charity, directly from the hospitals. In fact historically, hospitals were charities, many still are. And the rest still provide it too. In the story I linked the uninsured person's whole problem was that he earned too much to qualify for the hospital's financial aid program, so had to negotiate to get a lower bill.

lol, why on earth would we want to advocate for a system where the poor have to rely on the charity of for-profit institutions? Try that at the grocery store. We already have kickstarter campaigns for insulin. What you're advocating for is inhumane and shameful for a first-world country. It's shameful. And it's all besides the point.

A voluntary exchange between buyer and seller prior to exchange is necessary for a free market. You're describing a failure mode where a service provider is about to be screwed out of compensation and is willing to settle for less just to get something.

It's hard to believe you're advocating so hard for something so inhumane and dysfunctional.

Re: Congress is set to ban most surprise medical bills

#364

Post by imaginenore »

jsperson wrote: post #13

That it takes such effort to pass a bill like this - 80% public approval, banning a clearly predatory practice, has turned me from a pure free market thinking into a believer in single payer healthcare. The free market just doesn't work when there is very little elasticity in consumption. I've been on the receiving end of a $15K air ambulance bill (thankfully covered by insurance) as well as the out of network specia…

Nothing is "free market" about a current system.

• You're forced to buy health insurance.

• You can't choose any doctor you like one you have the insurance.

• You can't shop around for the best price, because the prices are not shown.

• You're not given an estimate of how much a procedure would cost.

• You can't choose which doctors visit your hospital room (and every time they do, you pay for it).

Re: Congress is set to ban most surprise medical bills

#365

Post by unishark »

arcticbull wrote: post #356
unishark wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So food is cheap because the govt intervenes, ignoring the giant private market, and healthcare is expensive because of the private market, ignoring the massive govt intervention. How convenient. "Threatening to not perform a service for someone" is not coercion, and does not invalidate a free market. A market is a place where scarce products can be exchanged between buyers and sellers who meet at an agreed upon pric…

> So food is cheap because the govt intervenes, ignoring the giant private market, and healthcare is expensive because of the private market, ignoring the massive govt intervention. How convenient. The only thing convenient is you not addressing my point :) The government intervention is a desparate attempt at not letting people die of disease and pestilence literally outside a point of care. You're asking for a dyst…

> Yes it is.

No it isn't. Speaking of dodging the point. The US didn't remain in the private system, it half-socialized it. And you must know Canada's system has been increasing in cost like everyone else's.

And speaking of magic single-payer economics for the good of all, what's up with that "socialized" army you mentioned? Most expensive in the world also. I expect the very same wanton mishandling of other people's money when it comes to the eventual govt takeover of healthcare. Hell they are already doing it as that 40 percent govt part is outpacing world spending all its own.

Venezuela is just a difference of degree. The same effect is seen in everyone's lack of R&D spending outside the US.

The way a market works is people find ways to serve people at a price they can afford. When you always force others to pay for the cadillac service for them, no one bothers to find cheap ways to provide healthcare.

Re: Congress is set to ban most surprise medical bills

#366

Post by unishark »

arcticbull wrote: post #343
unishark wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Healthcare for 40% of Americans? Socialized. (Medicare, Medicaid, VA). Medicare is socialized medicine. > Americans pay less for food than anyone else and more for medicine than anyone else. Is your point then that food is cheap because it is socialized at a 100% rate as you want healthcare to be? Or that your references to socialism are all red herrings? Poor people can get free healthcare the same ways they get…

> Is your point then that food is cheap because it is socialized at a 100% rate as you want healthcare to be? Or that your references to socialism are all red herrings? My point is food is cheap because the government intervenes, it's not a free market as you make it out to be, and yes food is provided to those in need. However, there aren't many in need in no small part because food is already the cheapest in the wo…

> The alternative to socialized services are privately owned and operated businesses. Not anarchy, necessarily, but libertarianism.

Privatizing these would mean anarchism as there's no longer a monopoly on force.

>- The freeways? Socialized.

>- The schools? Socialized.

>- The police? Socialized.

>- The fire stations? Socialized.

>- The army? Socialized.

>- The post office? Socialized.

Re: Congress is set to ban most surprise medical bills

#367

Post by agensaequivocum »

DangitBobby wrote: post #179
cpuguy83 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The annoying thing is, most people would agree that the whole system sucks... until you start talking about politics and suddenly you'd think a bunch of people have a love affair with their insurance company and healthcare providers.

"People love their insurance!" Is a dead giveaway that a politician is a sock puppet. Biden kept saying it during the primaries.

I'm not a politician and I will say: I love my insurance. Because it's actually pretty great.

Re: Congress is set to ban most surprise medical bills

#368

Post by fencepost »

pmart123 wrote: post #189
ashtonkem wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Price transparency would help, but it wouldn’t solve the duress problem. After a car crash we all want to go to the nearest hospital rather than the most price efficient one.

Pricing transparency through a public ally available database would at least help with more competitive or uniform drug/scheduled treatment costs?

Some level of price transparency becomes law in under 2 weeks on 1/1/2021.

https://www.foley.com/en/insights/publications/2019/12/price...

I believe this was fought out in court this past summer and upheld.

Re: Congress is set to ban most surprise medical bills

#369

Post by [deleted] »

unishark wrote: post #349
arcticbull wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is your point then that food is cheap because it is socialized at a 100% rate as you want healthcare to be? Or that your references to socialism are all red herrings? My point is food is cheap because the government intervenes, it's not a free market as you make it out to be, and yes food is provided to those in need. However, there aren't many in need in no small part because food is already the cheapest in the wo…

So food is cheap because the govt intervenes, ignoring the giant private market, and healthcare is expensive because of the private market, ignoring the massive govt intervention. How convenient. "Threatening to not perform a service for someone" is not coercion, and does not invalidate a free market. A market is a place where scarce products can be exchanged between buyers and sellers who meet at an agreed upon pric…

[deleted]

Re: Congress is set to ban most surprise medical bills

#370

Post by arcticbull »

unishark wrote: post #365
arcticbull wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So food is cheap because the govt intervenes, ignoring the giant private market, and healthcare is expensive because of the private market, ignoring the massive govt intervention. How convenient. The only thing convenient is you not addressing my point :) The government intervention is a desparate attempt at not letting people die of disease and pestilence literally outside a point of care. You're asking for a dyst…

> Yes it is. No it isn't. Speaking of dodging the point. The US didn't remain in the private system, it half-socialized it. And you must know Canada's system has been increasing in cost like everyone else's. And speaking of magic single-payer economics for the good of all, what's up with that "socialized" army you mentioned? Most expensive in the world also. I expect the very same wanton mishandling of other people's…

> The way a market works is people find ways to serve people at a price they can afford. When you always force others to pay for the cadillac service for them, no one bothers to find cheap ways to provide healthcare.

How can you be so twisted up about this? Americas system is the expensive one, everyone else's is cheap, and controlling costs better. Medicare may not be doing a perfect job but again it's controlling costs better than the private sector. What you are saying is strictly and objectively false.

Healthcare is optimized and improved in single-payer states, because there's still budgets.

You're defending the worst system out there from a cost perspective, and not top 20 in outcomes. And you're doing so by saying the system other countries are successfully using to control costs would fail to control costs, and using this to defend American's failure to control costs? You're telling me Canada is doing a bad job of controlling costs when it literally costs half as much per capita? Because their rate of cost growth is in line with their peers while America's is way, way beyond?

Your mental gymnastics are giving me a headache.

> Venezuela is just a difference of degree. The same effect is seen in everyone's lack of R&D spending outside the US.

And that? Also false. Venezuela is a difference of degree? What on earth are you talking about.

R&D spending? Guess which healthcare companies spend the most on R&D? It's not the American ones. It's all the European ones. #1 is Switzerland's Roche. #4 is Switzerland's Novartis. #6 is France's Sanofi. #9 is the UK's AstraZeneca. #10 is the UK's GlaxoSmithKlein. [1] This is yet another failed talking point.

Guess which country developed the first COVID vaccine? Germany. BioNTech's vaccine was paid for by Germany's government. Pfizer took $0 of US money and is productionizing a Turkish immigrant in Germany's German government funded research work.

You're just not right about this one, time to move on lol.

[1] https://www.fiercebiotech.com/special-report/top-10-pharma-r...

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