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Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices

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Re: Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices

#261

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #119
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What aspect of America's immigration model do you think intersects with this? > You said private healthcare/insurance were to blame. Switzerland has private health insurance. Private business in all western countries operates within the regulations and laws that cover them. The health insurance industry in Switzerland operates under a very different set of regulations and laws than the same industry in the USA. If yo…

> but ... this is actually the crux of the issue I'm not sure it is. Universal healthcare is orthogonal to private health insurance. That's the lesson of Switzerland's example. I don't believe this is commonly known or accepted in American politics. Instead, any attempt at reform is pitched and vilified as an attempt to end private health insurance and healthcare.

It may not be commonly known in the USA. However, I'm a european immigrant of 33 years, and it's well known to me.

However, "private health insurance" is not, in and of itself, really "a thing". Only "private health insurance plus a regulatory structure for it". It is in this department that the US falls over so badly, while, for example, Switzerland gets it (mostly) right.

Re: Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices

#262

Post by astura »

Ballu wrote: post #183
haberman wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Change from stainless steel hardware for doors and travel touch surfaces back to "brass/copper". I have never heard of this. I had to Google it to even understand your meaning. It's eye-opening to learn that different metal surfaces have an effect on the spread of germs.

Could you post some good links you read/browsed? Google is providing too much junk and difficult to reach any high level conclusion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimicrobial_properties_of_co...

Re: Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices

#263

Post by mr_toad »

easrng wrote: post #72
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In their defense, if it was anything but CSV files, they would be accused of making it too complicated/locking into proprietary formats and so on. I can't say CSV would be my first choice, but I don't really want to think what the alternative would be.

NDJSON? Sqlite?

Then you’d have to get your hands on a parser. Who wants to write up the business case and spend months going through change control (they’d probably just say no).

JSON and NDJSON can also be much larger than CSV files if the wrong structure is used.

Re: Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices

#264

Post by hugh-avherald »

drak0n1c wrote: post #78
mskar wrote: post #43

I work in data at https://www.carrumhealth.com/ , and I've been parsing this data for weeks. The transparency prices allow us to meaningfully negotiate with providers, and make tangible, incremental progress toward cheaper health care. Providers and existing insurance carriers leverage information asymmetry to control the market otherwise. For context, we bundle the 100's of itemized costs into a single, static bill…

Sounds like an application for ML, to determine which codes frequently coincide per-patient at each provider and then assign those groupings to cross-provider "Treatment XYZ" buckets to enable apples-to-apples comparisons.

Calculating a basic median for those groups would be a non-trivial (indeed, probably quite difficult) exercise at this scale.

Re: Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices

#265

Post by nerdponx »

watwut wrote: post #100
carabiner wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol, have you ever worked with data from a non-tech company? This is probably the best they have, even inside the company.

Can confirm. Also, it is not better in tech companies, they just have the same data in higher variety of formats and storage systems.

Not only was this probably a best effort, but I would bet that at least a few people were busting their asses trying to pull this data together and clean it up.

Re: Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices

#266

Post by Invictus0 »

chii wrote: post #253
seaourfreed wrote: post #246

USA Healthcare is 19.5% of GDP. Canada + Australia + UK + (a few similar countries) average 10.5% of GDP. The USA healthcare price gouges via run away prices. Healthcare corporations corrupting congress is the fuel that forces this on people (and breaks a free market).

But looking from another perspective - if healthcare is 20% of GDP, an awful amount of people are therefore paid directly due to this "waste". Any improvement in efficiency would mean those people lose out on jobs. A new use for them must be found, or there will be massive unemployment (at least, short-medium term).

Yes, and we should also think of the blacksmiths and the elevator operators, milkmen and horse carriage drivers, who will unfortunately be out of a job if we make our society more efficient.

Re: Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices

#267

Post by emkoemko »

bottlepalm wrote: post #102

This is the real solution to healthcare costs and quality. Instead of the government handing hospitals a blank check for low quality services in a single payer scenario, we allow price transparency, competition and the free market to drive down costs and increase quality. Hate him if you want, but this was a huge accomplishment by Trump that has just started to take effect. If you think the government can bring down…

NASA?

Re: Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices

#268

Post by [deleted] »

mr_toad wrote: post #259
ecommerceguy wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ProviDRs Care network is hosted in Google Drive. All 200gb compressed. The article writer has probably never heard of this network. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1zmNEPoVCa0kIVBIu2hu7...

I don’t think you can run BigQuery over a Google drive document.

[deleted]

Re: Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices

#269

Post by Barrin92 »

dominotw wrote: post #171
Barrin92 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

beyond Europe as well. Singapore which has exceptionally low healthcare spending (5.9% of GDP) heavily controls prices and purchases down to individual equipment in hospitals.

> Singapore which has exceptionally low healthcare spending yea because they have healthy population, its not because of some smart govt policy( if only it was that easy). singapore obesity rate = 10% usa obesity rate = 42 % usa obesity healthcare spend = 90%

>yea because they have healthy population, its not because of some smart govt policy

yes it is, because the health population itself is supported by strong intervention. Singapore banned the advertisements of sugary drinks years ago, Singapore strictly regulates the number of vehicle licenses in the country encouraging public transport and walking, it forces citizens to allocate money for healthcare to private savings funds which incentives reducing your own healthcare costs, and so on.

The reason American's are obese isn't a miracle or because Americans are stupider, it's because Americans refuse to take collective action when it comes to the health of the nation.

Re: Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices

#270

Post by cypress66 »

throw123123123 wrote: post #164
e_i_pi_2 wrote: post #80

My current assumption is that private healthcare/insurance is to blame, because countries without that or with less generally have better outcomes at less cost. Looking for evidence to the contrary

Argentina has public free healthcare and it still has growing expenditures in the private health sector.

Here in Argentina you only use the public free healthcare if you aren't insured or can't afford private healthcare.

Also anybody legally employed must have insurance (of varying quality).

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