131–140 of 403 posts
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cancer treatment costs can make anyone poor. just sayin'
That's why AFLAC offers cancer insurance. https://www.aflac.com/individuals/products/cancer-insurance....
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I didn't like CSV because too much actual data has commas in it, so commas aren't a good delimiter.
Quoting every column is a safe way to handle this, at the cost of slightly larger files. You can then escape a quote with another quote.
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 used to negotiate with hospitals on reimbursement and if I were still doing the job, the first thing is do is pull up this data and say “This other plan of similar size is paying $X. I’m willing to pay the same.”
Sure it will take time to shake out. Hospitals will reject super low prices (that they were possibly losing money) for all payers. In exchange insurers will likely reduce the ultra high payments where they were paying a 500% mark up.
It will likely take a few years for it to shake out, but assuming the transparency remains I could see this actually driving prices closer to cost. Sure, big payers will drive it lower and small payers will pay more, but we could start to see a much smaller range.
Fingers crossed.
Not only do we need public price lists, the middlemen need to be cut out — specifically, the doctors. You should be able to wander into a specialist's office and get an appointment without having to go through a GP first; you should be able to get most any test done in exactly the same way. Due to the insurance companies and the hospitals they work for, doctors aren't going to suggest anything other than the basic st…
It doesn’t make sense to pay for a dermatologist at $150 for a visit to look at a rash when a GP would do at $75.
> CMS's price transparency law, which requires all hospitals to post their prices online in a single, machine-readable file Whoever got this legislation through deserves a pat on the back.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2020/11/06/on-healt...
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.
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My son had strep throat. Stanford billed us just shy of $50K, but not before sending us a letter letting us know they had stopped accepting our insurance (BCBS) a few weeks prior. Obviously, more done than just a throat swab for the 50K, but whole thing was insane.
I really want to expose Stanford's ridiculous billing and shame them to no end, but I don't have enough Twitter followers. I know healthcare billing in the US is f-ed up but Stanford is particularly bad.
What a strange concept, "hospital price".
Spoken like an American. In other countries where healthcare is not paid for by the government, the prices are readily available. Here are some examples: https://www.ktph.com.sg/patients/hospital-charges https://www.sgh.com.sg/patient-care/visiting-specialist/char...
So even if you’re destitute you need to pay something within your means, even if it’s $5 for a hospital stay.
I hate Trump and am glad he was voted out, but you have to give him his dues. This is 100% his doing, through executive action. The Dems could have done this but never did. It’s just another example of how neither side of the aisle is truly on your side.
All politicians are crooks. Left or right, doesn't matter. They are both accepting bribery under "lobbying".