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I analyzed hospital price lists so you didn't have to

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Re: I analyzed hospital price lists so you didn't have to

#71

Post by hotpotamus »

Someone1234 wrote: post #13

When High Deductible Insurance was introduced the supposed concept was to "give employees a stake in their costs, and therefore lower them for both employer and employee." However, even today doing so is very challenging, and before laws like this it was essentially impossible. There's no way to shop around American healthcare, with the system itself working against you at every turn (e.g. doctors prescribing named b…

I feel like if your response when I ask you the price is, "I don't know", then my response is, "well then I don't know if I can/will pay that". A friend of mine with limited means says his medical plan is just to go the ER and give them a fake name - he came up with it after suffering a head injury (pool cue to the head) and being unable to remember the details of his treatment. I don't think it's a good system, but it seems to be the one we've got.

Re: I analyzed hospital price lists so you didn't have to

#72

Post by flatline »

javajosh wrote: post #37
Someone1234 wrote: post #13

When High Deductible Insurance was introduced the supposed concept was to "give employees a stake in their costs, and therefore lower them for both employer and employee." However, even today doing so is very challenging, and before laws like this it was essentially impossible. There's no way to shop around American healthcare, with the system itself working against you at every turn (e.g. doctors prescribing named b…

>So I guess I should shop around by moving cities No, the solution to most social ills in America is to simply not be poor. If you are poor, stop it. Then you don't have to worry about any of this. Consider abortion, a procedure now outlawed in many US states. If you're not poor, you can just pay to travel to another state or country, have the procedure, do some sight-seeing, and come home. The law has no de facto ef…

I think the abortion case is more problematic than this. The laws raise a high barrier to entry, not just financial, but logistical and social. You can leave to get an abortion if you have the money, but there will be a fine on you, and you have to make travel arrangements for a very uncomfortable medical procedure. Poor people still have other, riskier options available.

Re: I analyzed hospital price lists so you didn't have to

#73

Post by oneoff786 »

Someone1234 wrote: post #13

When High Deductible Insurance was introduced the supposed concept was to "give employees a stake in their costs, and therefore lower them for both employer and employee." However, even today doing so is very challenging, and before laws like this it was essentially impossible. There's no way to shop around American healthcare, with the system itself working against you at every turn (e.g. doctors prescribing named b…

> When High Deductible Insurance was introduced the supposed concept was to "give employees a stake in their costs, and therefore lower them for both employer and employee."

Funny, I always thought it was just squeezing every last penny out of customers without letting them feel like they didn’t have health insurance for big ones

Re: I analyzed hospital price lists so you didn't have to

#74

Post by lotsofpulp »

legitster wrote: post #49

A chain of clinics recently opened in our area that post all of their prices online. We almost exclusively go there now for everything. Even if they are occasionally more expensive (briefly, until the normal UC would send their surprise bills), it's just so much easier to pay up front. Thankfully we have an HSA and it's our money.

If you can afford to pay for it with post tax non HSA money, then investing the HSA funds in a Fidelity HSA and letting them grow is the ideal maneuver.

Pdf your healthcare expense receipts and reimburse yourself from the HSA 50 years in the future completely tax free.

Re: I analyzed hospital price lists so you didn't have to

#75

Post by duffpkg »

Someone1234 wrote: post #13

When High Deductible Insurance was introduced the supposed concept was to "give employees a stake in their costs, and therefore lower them for both employer and employee." However, even today doing so is very challenging, and before laws like this it was essentially impossible. There's no way to shop around American healthcare, with the system itself working against you at every turn (e.g. doctors prescribing named b…

The primary cause today of doctors prescribing name brand medications without the ability for substitution of generics is a form of institutional stupidity. EMR prescribing systems are driven by a common "formulary" that has an entry for each drug and defaults. Often the people that define formularies are a weird mix of technological people that don't know anything about the drugs/medicine and medicine people that don't know anything about the technology. The checkbox for the formulary entry that defaults to "allow substititions" is not properly set or is defaulted to disallow them.

Also this reminds me of one of the more evil things I have ever seen in healthcare. Practice Fusion gave doctors a "free EMR" because it was being paid by opiate pharmecuitcal companies to create an electronic EMR workflow that intentionally increased unecessary opiate prescribing. Absolute evil in my opinion.

https://www.justice.gov/usao-vt/pr/electronic-health-records...

Re: I analyzed hospital price lists so you didn't have to

#76

Post by colordrops »

Someone1234 wrote: post #13

When High Deductible Insurance was introduced the supposed concept was to "give employees a stake in their costs, and therefore lower them for both employer and employee." However, even today doing so is very challenging, and before laws like this it was essentially impossible. There's no way to shop around American healthcare, with the system itself working against you at every turn (e.g. doctors prescribing named b…

> give employees a stake in their costs, and therefore lower them for both employer and employee

The idea wasn't to get people to shop around, at least in my opinion, but rather to not use healthcare altogether unless absolutely necessary, because they feel the cost of the services more when they pay for the directly.

Re: I analyzed hospital price lists so you didn't have to

#77

Post by micromacrofoot »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #63
javajosh wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>So I guess I should shop around by moving cities No, the solution to most social ills in America is to simply not be poor. If you are poor, stop it. Then you don't have to worry about any of this. Consider abortion, a procedure now outlawed in many US states. If you're not poor, you can just pay to travel to another state or country, have the procedure, do some sight-seeing, and come home. The law has no de facto ef…

"No, the solution to most social ills in America is to simply not be poor. If you are poor, stop " In healthcare not being poor is sufficient. You actually have to be quite well off in order to not worry about cost.

Yes! My salary is twice the local average and still worry a medical event could wipeout my life savings.

Re: I analyzed hospital price lists so you didn't have to

#78

Post by pengaru »

cecilpl2 wrote: post #70
SilasX wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WTF about, not just the compensation, but the fact that some of these show a salary of $200k with $2.X million in benefits. Like, what? https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2021/gateway-comm...

Almost certainly the value of pensions. There are teachers on that list making $65k with "benefits" of 1mm, which is probably the NPV of ~20 years of pension income.

Doesn't seem to add up though, if you keyword search for "teacher" [0], the results are dominated by GCC with consistently elevated benefits. Once you get out of GCC dominated results, the numbers start looking a lot less surprising - until another GCC entry shows up.

[0] https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?q=teacher

Re: I analyzed hospital price lists so you didn't have to

#79

Post by SilasX »

cecilpl2 wrote: post #70
SilasX wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

WTF about, not just the compensation, but the fact that some of these show a salary of $200k with $2.X million in benefits. Like, what? https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2021/gateway-comm...

Almost certainly the value of pensions. There are teachers on that list making $65k with "benefits" of 1mm, which is probably the NPV of ~20 years of pension income.

Yeah but it would only show that year’s gain in pension value.

Re: I analyzed hospital price lists so you didn't have to

#80

Post by maxerickson »

QuarterReptile wrote: post #61
arwhatever wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How about if you can’t post the prices, you simply aren’t allowed to bill for any services?

This is the one that's simple to enforce. No price, no bill.

Y'all are leaving out the no service part that would come with that.
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