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I'm one of the co-founders of Turquoise Health, mentioned in the article here. We've been downloading and parsing this data all day. It's a really big deal in the industry that the prices that insurance companies pay doctors are now being shared publicly. It will have all sorts of positive impacts over time, hopefully making rate negotiations more consistent and fair between different insurance plans. Right now, 10x…
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> if they are not providing the best prices, their customers will go elsewhere Nope. Not if they can inject enough noise into the comparison process to hide the differences. There's a reason they threw so much money at getting bronze/silver/gold standards killed. They knew it was critical to avoid being squeezed. > pharmacists complaining Pharmacists are a tiny part of the bloat picture and it's always easier to put…
> There's a reason they threw so much money at getting bronze/silver/gold standards killed. I am not aware of these standards being killed. I select a Gold HSA plan every year. https://www.healthcare.gov/choose-a-plan/plans-categories/ > Come back when drugs and hospital stays stop costing twice as much as the rest of the developed world, and then I'll believe that insurance companies are doing their negotiating job.…
My point about performance -- 2x, 10%y/y -- stands.
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What do you serve to gain from scraping all of this information?
I was guessing it was this bit at the bottom of their landing page: > Are you a transparent provider or payer? > There is a market for transparency. Let patients find you by claiming > your provider page and listing your services. It only takes 10 minutes. But following through that link says it is a free program.
Part of that is assuming that prices will be public, so we encourage them to claim their own page and take control of the rates listed there.
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> There's a reason they threw so much money at getting bronze/silver/gold standards killed. I am not aware of these standards being killed. I select a Gold HSA plan every year. https://www.healthcare.gov/choose-a-plan/plans-categories/ > Come back when drugs and hospital stays stop costing twice as much as the rest of the developed world, and then I'll believe that insurance companies are doing their negotiating job.…
I could be wrong or I could be remembering that they were effectively killed by inserting a key loophole. I'll have to dig up my notes and probably do some research to figure that out. My point about performance -- 2x, 10%y/y -- stands.
What would you do if you were the insurer and there was one hospital in an area or 1 patented medicine and the government forced you to cover it?
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I could be wrong or I could be remembering that they were effectively killed by inserting a key loophole. I'll have to dig up my notes and probably do some research to figure that out. My point about performance -- 2x, 10%y/y -- stands.
There is no point to comparing US expenses to other countries where drug manufacturers and hospitals and doctors are not allowed to negotiate, and have to accept what the government gives them. What would you do if you were the insurer and there was one hospital in an area or 1 patented medicine and the government forced you to cover it?
The point is that we should be doing what they are doing. When you're in a hole, stop digging.
> WWYD
I would get rid of private insurers and have the NHS negotiate prices.
That's not too bad, so I asked how much it would be to replace/update the lenses on my old frames, entirely at my charge.
It would've been $450. Just for the lenses.
I passed. I find it scandalous how much they can charge when just before they were perfectly happy to accept less than half that amount.
Instead I got another pair on EyeBuyDirect for $80.
It's not just the insurers themselves, but the whole system. Burn it all down.
> “What we’re learning from the hospital data is that insurers are really bad at negotiating” Do the insurers have any incentive to negotiate well? Since their customers are not very price-sensitive (since they aren't marketing directly to patients or doctors), I would imagine they don't have a huge incentive to do anything but apply a markup to whatever prices the hospital tells them it costs.
If insurers’ customers were not price sensitive, then they would have higher profit margins than 5%.
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There is no point to comparing US expenses to other countries where drug manufacturers and hospitals and doctors are not allowed to negotiate, and have to accept what the government gives them. What would you do if you were the insurer and there was one hospital in an area or 1 patented medicine and the government forced you to cover it?
No point? The point is that we should be doing what they are doing. When you're in a hole, stop digging. > WWYD I would get rid of private insurers and have the NHS negotiate prices.