Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m a Canadian, and I would never want to give up our single payer system. That being said, Canada has a huge health care problem right now. Frequently they need to close emergency services in major (& minor) cities at night due to staff shortages. The wait times for basic diagnostics is on the order of months (not days or weeks). For example, a relative of mine has lost 90 pounds since the start of the year, complai…
Well, I'm here in a major metro area of the US and it's 6 months or more for every doctor I try to see. Very difficult to get in to see anyone for anything.
Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices
501–510 of 549 posts
Re: Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices
#502Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most doctors I talk to vaguely run around the answer before mumbling that a huge way to cut costs (which will surely happen) is to cut doctors salaries. Source: once engaged to a doctor who had doctor friends and doctor parents/family.
And there is a reason why we shouldn't go off of anecdotal evidence. It's blatantly false. Doctors’ salaries account for only about 8% of U.S. healthcare costs. A 40% cut in these salaries would reduce healthcare spending by only about 3% [1][2]. Doctor salaries are not a huge way to cut costs. If anything this would make the problem worse. [1] https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-09-14/dont-blame-... [2] https…
It’s irrelevant how much of the budget it is. It’s about perception and power. If you try to cut soap in the operating room or other supplies, you’ll look bad for endangering the patient. If you try to cut procedures you’ll look bad. If you try to cut doctor salaries, those “overpaid” doctors look bad for complaining.
Doctors have a reputation in america for being extremely well paid. If you tel people making $60k a year that their tax bill for medical costs could be lower if you reduce it by taking $50k from a doctor making $500k (taxpayer dollars!) they’ll support that. Even if it’s not a big amount.
Reducing healthcare spending 3% without any systemic change in medical treatments or equipment or negotiation with pharmaceutical companies is a huge and easy win.
Re: Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices
#503Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have really no opinion on any of this, but please realize there are more factors than health care on life expectancy.
What is a better metric and how does the US do on it?
Life expectancy is a particularly bad metric to use to compare health care systems, because it's heavily influenced by (1) how much people drive, (2) how much violent crime there is, and (3) how much drug addiction the country has. None of those are health care metrics.
I don't believe there's any credible critic of American health care that premises their complaint on America delivering bad health care. We deliver pretty excellent health care, and we deliver it faster than a lot of countries with better health care outcomes. We are in many places in the US overprovisioned for care (by measurements like empty hospital beds, or overprescription of elective procedures). The chief complaint about American health care is how expensive it is, not how good it is.
That distinction is especially important because getting costs down may involve confronting the ways American care is better than it needs to be or should be. For instance: we do a lot more elective surgeries than countries with better outcomes, in part because we do them outpatient here, and they're inpatient (a much bigger deal) elsewhere. For example, my understanding is you're much more likely to get a hernia repaired (probably needlessly) here than in the UK.
Re: Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices
#504Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m not the OP and have no deep knowledge, but I’ve often heard cited that the US out-researches other nations, so we incur “R&D” costs for healthcare that other nations use. Eg pharmaceuticals are researched in the US while the patents are used in other nations through a cost structure that doesn’t allow the original researching party to recoup costs. On-shoring that research also seems to be an advantage -Looking a…
Then why do they spend so much more on marketing than R&D? https://www.ahip.org/news/articles/new-study-in-the-midst-of...
Generally in business marketing budgets should generate more sales than they cost (in ideal case), so big budgets doesn’t mean that they’re “wasting” that money that could go elsewhere. If the sale wouldn’t happen without an ad, then that’s a necessary ad.
Re: Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices
#505Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm mostly interested why the USA suddenly becomes pro-worker when it comes to this expensive and inefficient healthcare system they have. I swear you could be talking to the most hardline GOP guy who wouldn't spit on a trade unionist if they were on fire ... but if you mention, say, single-payer healthcare they'll start weeping for the all the workers in hospitals' billing departments and in health insurance compani…
No, they're worried that single-payer would increase healthcare costs and/or decrease quality. They might be wrong, but that's not why they'd be worried.
For a theoretical based on what actually happened where I live, Hospital X is contractually obligated to use a specific kind of infusion pump from supplier Y and order blood tests from specific supplier Z in order to get Blue Cross Blue Shield coverage. Meanwhile the state university pushed out the other hospital in the city and heavily expanded the surviving hospital campus they sponsored to take on the increased capacity and introduce the services they were previously lacking compared to their now dead competitor. So Hospital X is just following the policy of University Network A. All of which is a common practice.
In many states the state university sponsored medical care networks are the or are close to being the biggest employers. The University Of Iowa medical network, the West Virginia University network, and University Of Pittsburgh Medical Center network all have taken over a majority of medical care functions in their states, leaving mostly specialists and those in mental health to independent practices. That exacerbates the issue of insurance and supplier contracts, because these small places that are competing with the university networks often don't bother with insurance unless it's government provided and just prefer patients pay up front instead. They lose too much time and money sorting through the myriad private insurance providers, plans, and coverage obligations without full time staff to handle that for them. Medical billing is a massive industry for a reason.
Now, if everyone wasn't chained to private insurance and juggling all of these providers, coverage limits, and contractual obligations the number of inefficiencies and thus the overall cost would decrease. We have historical examples of this even in the U.S., by comparing what happened between 1960 to 1975 and it's modern equivalent of 2005 to 2020. Healthcare costs were increasing rapidly, doctors were dwindling in number, and there weren't enough medical students for generalist fields in the 1960s just like the 2010s. The major difference is that while quality of care continued to increase through the 1960s and early 1970s, both the efficacy and quality of care has gone down since the 2000s. The several minor differences were that nationwide coverage was rarely available in the 1960s compared to the 2010s, that Medicare was spending more than it was receiving in the early 1970s thanks to how Medicare was funded in the 1960s, and that privatization of entire hospitals was uncommon and frowned upon in the 1960s because of the income impact it had on the doctors. The U.S. barely survived the 1960s medical crunch with enough government intervention, but it is dying under the weight of the 2010s medical crunch because the government can't easily intervene and is lobbied to maintain distance.
So the reason the lead figures in the American right are worried about single payer is because they won't make as much money. And they're very good at convincing people to vote against their own interests because they know those people don't care to look into complex systems too deeply. As a result many of the regular voters and workers are worried because someone told them a lie about where the money is actually being wasted and what the actual history is.
Re: Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices
#506Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's factually untrue. China and Japan alone match the USA, and when adjusting for percent of GDP the USA isn't even in the top five countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_research_...
Why would you adjust this value instead of using absolute terms?
At the end of the day, though, this is a distraction from the core argument. A valid defence of US healthcare policy is not "but we're good at research." Imagine if China was trying to defend their overbudget and under-effective military by talking up how much they've done for global aeronautical research.
Grandma lost her house because she got kidney stones, but, butterfingers, at least we research stuff! Oh and often times our pharma kills more people than it saves and true justice is never metered out ala opioid epidemic.
Keep shouting #1, #1, #1 until you believe it.
Re: Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices
#507This "data dump" is step 2 of 4 to deliver "on President Trump’s executive order on Improving Price and Quality Transparency in American Healthcare to Put Patients First."(1) By January 1, 2023, plans and issuers must make price comparison information available with respect to an initial list of 500 identified items and services. By January 1, 2024, plans and issuers must make price comparison information available w…
I don't understand why this took so long when it was part of the ACA in 2014 [1]. How did it take another administration, an executive order, and 8 more years?! Hell, even the Clinton plan was calling for it in 1993 [2] but that never went anywhere. [1] https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/finance/new-price-transpa... [2] https://www.heritage.org/health-care-reform/report/guide-the...
[1]https://www.cms.gov/files/document/hospital-price-transparen...
Re: Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices
#508My 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
Across the board price controls seem to be a common to the various European health care systems. It is my understanding that upper limits are set for the cost of medicine. There is quite a bit of variety across Europe - U.K. is 100% government run, France is a public/private mix, Germany is similar to Obamacare in some ways, others are single payer, apparently some are private, also. But I've read that they all have…
I know I'm a broken record on this but people who say this are simply wrong.
1) There is not one NHS for the UK. Health is devolved and there are totally separate systems for NI, Scotland, Wales, and England.
2) Speaking only for England, it's not "run by the government". The NHS in England is run by NHS England and Improvement. The people who work for NHSE/I are not civil servants, they do not work for the government.
Re: Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices
#509Earlier quoted context omitted.
NASA’s budget for 2022 is about $24 billion or roughly $145-$150 per working person. Perhaps a lot of money depending on what you think should be prioritized. personally I think it’s hard to argue that they aren’t delivering something of high value to humanity, especially recently with the success of the JWST. And maybe very especially compared to other agencies.
NASA is wasting the bulk of their funding in an obsolete launch system. Over the he past 50 years they have held back any economical progress in access to space. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/nasas-artemis-rocket...
"Over the he past 50 years they have held back any economical progress in access to space."
without NASA there wouldn't be any SpaceX's and others doing space projects ....
Re: Health insurers just published close to a trillion hospital prices
#510Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, they're worried that single-payer would increase healthcare costs and/or decrease quality. They might be wrong, but that's not why they'd be worried.
I've heard that too, but I have heard on multiple occasions that this will cause a lot of people employed in the field to lose their (sometimes quite well paying) jobs working in billing.