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Show HN: Compare prices that US hospitals charge patients, insurance companies

turquoise.health

121–130 of 389 posts

Re: Show HN: Compare prices that US hospitals charge patients, insurance companies

#121

This is made possible thanks to the current administration’s CMS price transparency rule which went into effect Jan 1,2021 http://www.cms.gov/hospital-price-transparency Edit: By “current” I mean the Trump administration.

And by "current" administration you mean the Trump administration because people here don't like to give credit where credit is due.

Re: Show HN: Compare prices that US hospitals charge patients, insurance companies

#122

This is great (and totally unfortunate that it needs to exist in the US), thanks for building it. One issue: it looks like the search is not respecting the zip code for me if I change it. For example, if I search for a procedure using the zip code the site auto-populates, my results are great. However, if I change the zip code to my actual neighborhood here in NYC, I'm seeing results from all over the country.

Thanks, I'll take a look! If you don't mind, would you mind dropping me an email at adam@turquoise.health with the zip code you are trying?

Re: Show HN: Compare prices that US hospitals charge patients, insurance companies

#123
post #79

It's always fascinating to see that even compared to prices you pay as a self-paying patient in Germany (which are already 1.5x - 2x higher than what the "public" insurances, ie. 85% of the population, pay for the same procedures), the prices in the US are about 5x to 10x higher. The standard of care seems to be quite comparable if you look at outcomes, so there must be huge inefficiences in the American system (doct…

Everything is inflated the whole way in the American system. Universities overcharge in the US. The medical education costs upwards of $800K if you include the cost of lost opportunity had you gone into a different field and worked those years instead. So doctors need higher salaries. That, combined with idiotic market dynamics around medical supplies, means that all medical costs are higher. That in turn means every…

I believe a reform of the healthcare system should include paying for medical school. Let's offer a deal: You go to med school for free, then you work for the government for a decent professional salary.

Re: Show HN: Compare prices that US hospitals charge patients, insurance companies

#124

This 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...

Came here to post the same. My guess is he will go down as the worst president in US history, but even a terrible administration can have a few noteworthy accomplishments. This and the airline reforms (1) will probably be remembered as the best things that came out of the Trump administration. 1: https://www.inc.com/bill-murphy-jr/president-trump-just-sign...

> My guess is he will go down as the worst president in US history

Nope, best President in terms of:

- foreign policy since Reagan, and maybe Roosevelt

- over 400 miles of border wall built

- significant repeal of anti-business laws.

- excellent response to CCP, stunning even China watchers.

All that despite almost 4 years of baseless Mueller investigation.

Re: Show HN: Compare prices that US hospitals charge patients, insurance companies

#125
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine it's on account of all the administration and intermediaries.

It's not. There's a good breakdown that compares what drives healthcare spending between the US vs Germany (and others). https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/what-drives-health... The vast majority of the difference comes from just the raw cost of inpatient and outpatient care. Even if you were to completely zero out the administrative costs per capita, you'd hardly make a dent in bridging the gap.

How can that possibly be true?

How can in/out patient care be so vastly different in cost?

Re: Show HN: Compare prices that US hospitals charge patients, insurance companies

#126

It's always fascinating to see that even compared to prices you pay as a self-paying patient in Germany (which are already 1.5x - 2x higher than what the "public" insurances, ie. 85% of the population, pay for the same procedures), the prices in the US are about 5x to 10x higher. The standard of care seems to be quite comparable if you look at outcomes, so there must be huge inefficiences in the American system (doct…

Those are "sticker prices", the opening for negotiation/haggling.

Re: Show HN: Compare prices that US hospitals charge patients, insurance companies

#127

Here’s another consideration: care quality is very disparate across the country in the US. And what’s even more frustrating is that cost is not correlated to quality. While I am a bit more critical because I’ve seen “how the sausage is made” first hand for years, this also makes it that much harder to implement universal health care in the US. Don’t think someone living in rural Wyoming should pay the same HC tax/pre…

Definitely true - quality and price are only very loosely related. Right now we have care quality information on the hospital "information" page, but most people aren't finding it in the current design and we are going to re-work it so it's more visible when browsing prices.

Re: Show HN: Compare prices that US hospitals charge patients, insurance companies

#128

It 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?

Yeah, actually I can attest that a lot of our hospital clients have no idea what the hospital next door is charging / getting paid by insurance. So, a lot of price setting is guessing. It's often not cost-based. And often, negotiations will arbitrarily shift high prices over to one service type, eg Blue Cross will say: "Fine, if you want to get paid that much for knee replacements, we get a lower rate for bariatric surgery." So you'll find weird price discrepancies within the same provider.

Re: Show HN: Compare prices that US hospitals charge patients, insurance companies

#129
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe any medical professional in Germany has wage exceeding 150k EUR yearly after taxes - doctors in the US sometimes have multiples of that, coincidentally 5x to 10x more is not unusual.

Just throwing some data, average general practice doctor is 150k$ in US vs 61k$ in germany. https://www.payscale.com/research/DE/Job=Physician_%2F_Docto... https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Physician_%2F_Docto...

I don't believe that salary income is the complete picture for physicians in the US. There are still a lot of doctors who are also "insider investors" in clinics, diagnostic equipment, and other medical businesses.

Re: Show HN: Compare prices that US hospitals charge patients, insurance companies

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just throwing some data, average general practice doctor is 150k$ in US vs 61k$ in germany. https://www.payscale.com/research/DE/Job=Physician_%2F_Docto... https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Physician_%2F_Docto...

I believe that doctors in the US get paid more than in germany, but 60k seems very very low. Teachers have an income in that range.... Edit: Looking at some german articles, maybe they did not convert from eur to usd, ~80,000-100,000$ (depending on expertise etc) seems more likely for a dr working at a hospital (which is still low imho compared to US salaries...). https://www.arzt-wirtschaft.de/wie-hoch-ist-das-gehal…

And furthermore you have to differentiate between "assistance" doctors (~82k $) and "chef" doctors (~336k $). (I don't know the comparable titles in the US system)

Both values are taken from the parent's article and converted using Google. Of course, mostly without serious student debt

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