Source (one of many): https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-drugs/white-hou...
Show HN: Compare prices that US hospitals charge patients, insurance companies
11–20 of 389 posts
Re: Show HN: Compare prices that US hospitals charge patients, insurance companies
#12Sometimes the cost is bigger than the cost in a different country plus the plane ticket.
Re: Show HN: Compare prices that US hospitals charge patients, insurance companies
#13Why are the prices so insane? Where do the money go? I'm from Eastern Europe so of course the prices would be different, but by an order of a magnitude at the minimum seems strange.
- paying for services for people who don't have/can't afford insurance. - medical malpractice insurance -> legal system - big pharma/med devices industry
- doctors are paid higher in the US than in another countries
- billing staff overhead because of the insane insurance system
- highly paid hospital administration
- lots of middlemen that stay invisible because there is no price transparency
- shiny new buildings that are built by friends of the hospital administration
Re: Show HN: Compare prices that US hospitals charge patients, insurance companies
#14Why are the prices so insane? Where do the money go? I'm from Eastern Europe so of course the prices would be different, but by an order of a magnitude at the minimum seems strange.
- paying for services for people who don't have/can't afford insurance. - medical malpractice insurance -> legal system - big pharma/med devices industry
Big pharma has actually reduced the hospitalization costs over the past two decades.
Edit: can someone explain downvotes?. How is big pharma increasing hospital costs?
please take a look at this, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2669633/
"The major empirical finding from this research is that medication use by Medicare beneficiaries is significantly negatively associated with hospital spending. Moreover, the cross-effect is quite large: each additional prescription drug fill reduces hospital costs by slightly more than $100 or about 5 percent measured at the mean level of Medicare payments in 2000 for inpatient hospital services for study subjects. "
Re: Show HN: Compare prices that US hospitals charge patients, insurance companies
#15It would be nice to be able to see the lowest & highest prices & other stats. I can manually find the lowest price by sorting by price but I can't seem to reverse it to show the highest price first... Anyway, it seems that there are orders of magnitude differences for the same service. The service 'MRI Lumbar Spine With & Without Contrast Material' has a lowest price of $210 while the closest and highest I personally…
If no one publishes their prices how do you set yours? 2 dollars? 2000 dollars? 2m dollars?
Re: Show HN: Compare prices that US hospitals charge patients, insurance companies
#16This was a big accomplishment of the Trump admin. Regardless of what your other opinions of his administration are, healthcare pricing transparency in the US is a very important step forward to improving the healthcare situation there. Source (one of many): https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-drugs/white-hou...
Re: Show HN: Compare prices that US hospitals charge patients, insurance companies
#17This was a big accomplishment of the Trump admin. Regardless of what your other opinions of his administration are, healthcare pricing transparency in the US is a very important step forward to improving the healthcare situation there. Source (one of many): https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-drugs/white-hou...
Re: Show HN: Compare prices that US hospitals charge patients, insurance companies
#18Sometimes the cost is bigger than the cost in a different country plus the plane ticket.
I guess you could roll the dice and hope the for best but you will lose your ability to sue the hospital for malpractice if they mess up.
Re: Show HN: Compare prices that US hospitals charge patients, insurance companies
#19It would be nice to be able to see the lowest & highest prices & other stats. I can manually find the lowest price by sorting by price but I can't seem to reverse it to show the highest price first... Anyway, it seems that there are orders of magnitude differences for the same service. The service 'MRI Lumbar Spine With & Without Contrast Material' has a lowest price of $210 while the closest and highest I personally…
>How can there be such a large difference in price for something that, I believe, is legally & medically the same procedure? If no one publishes their prices how do you set yours? 2 dollars? 2000 dollars? 2m dollars?
Re: Show HN: Compare prices that US hospitals charge patients, insurance companies
#20Sometimes the cost is bigger than the cost in a different country plus the plane ticket.
I guess you could roll the dice and hope the for best but you will lose your ability to sue the hospital for malpractice if they mess up.