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Banks and hospitals are cashing in when patients can't pay for health care

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Re: Banks and hospitals are cashing in when patients can't pay for health care

#21

Post by HDThoreaun »

elzbardico wrote: post #7

What is incredibly amazing is how much health care costs in the US. Government expenditures Per Capita are over twice of the nations like Canada, UK, Australia, and Japan. And most of this for medicare, for which only a fraction of the population is eligible. And yet, this is not enough, and people need private health insurance. Then you look at the prices of common medications, and most of them (mind you, a lot of t…

It's impossible to have a free market in healthcare because there is a gigantic information asymmetry between patients and providers. The government has responded to that with regulations, making the market even less free. So I agree, the invisible hand doesn't work in healthcare, but the government has also made things worse.

Re: Banks and hospitals are cashing in when patients can't pay for health care

#22

Post by antisthenes »

If you have obscene hospital bills, just don't pay them. Worst case scenario, you will get sued and have a lien put on your house.This still doesn't obligate you to pay. You can just let inflation eat away at the bill for years on end.

People need to hit these profiteering practices right in the wallet.

I'll take bad credit over actual bankruptcy any day.

Re: Banks and hospitals are cashing in when patients can't pay for health care

#24

Post by chasd00 »

elzbardico wrote: post #7

What is incredibly amazing is how much health care costs in the US. Government expenditures Per Capita are over twice of the nations like Canada, UK, Australia, and Japan. And most of this for medicare, for which only a fraction of the population is eligible. And yet, this is not enough, and people need private health insurance. Then you look at the prices of common medications, and most of them (mind you, a lot of t…

the "invisible hand" can't work because there is no price list available to consumers. That's the craziest thing to me, you can't get a price list for a procedure ahead of time and compare with competitors to get a better deal. There's no way for price discovery to work without an informed consumer.

Re: Banks and hospitals are cashing in when patients can't pay for health care

#25

Post by Mezzie »

elzbardico wrote: post #7

What is incredibly amazing is how much health care costs in the US. Government expenditures Per Capita are over twice of the nations like Canada, UK, Australia, and Japan. And most of this for medicare, for which only a fraction of the population is eligible. And yet, this is not enough, and people need private health insurance. Then you look at the prices of common medications, and most of them (mind you, a lot of t…

In addition to people mentioning the information asymmetry, healthcare demand is also inelastic and not substitutable. I have MS. If I sub out my treatment, I increase my odds of losing the ability to ever walk again. Likewise, if I have a relapse and end up in the hospital, I need steroids immediately.

Re: Banks and hospitals are cashing in when patients can't pay for health care

#26

Post by chasd00 »

antisthenes wrote: post #22

If you have obscene hospital bills, just don't pay them. Worst case scenario, you will get sued and have a lien put on your house.This still doesn't obligate you to pay. You can just let inflation eat away at the bill for years on end. People need to hit these profiteering practices right in the wallet. I'll take bad credit over actual bankruptcy any day.

I agree, never ever pay a medical bill as printed. They're just trolling for suckers. It's one of the shadiest things out there, they're just looking for people that will pay the full amount because that's what the bill says. Medical bills are always negotiable to such a degree that the printed bill is effectively meaningless.

Re: Banks and hospitals are cashing in when patients can't pay for health care

#27

Post by AlexTWithBeard »

chasd00 wrote: post #24
elzbardico wrote: post #7

What is incredibly amazing is how much health care costs in the US. Government expenditures Per Capita are over twice of the nations like Canada, UK, Australia, and Japan. And most of this for medicare, for which only a fraction of the population is eligible. And yet, this is not enough, and people need private health insurance. Then you look at the prices of common medications, and most of them (mind you, a lot of t…

the "invisible hand" can't work because there is no price list available to consumers. That's the craziest thing to me, you can't get a price list for a procedure ahead of time and compare with competitors to get a better deal. There's no way for price discovery to work without an informed consumer.

So... Imagine there's a law banning surprise bills. No longer separate bills from a hospital and then from a surgeon and then from anesthesiologist and then from the janitor. No "oopsie, sorry, your pimple removal went wrong and you had a cardiac arrest, here's your bill".

How much better will things become?

Re: Banks and hospitals are cashing in when patients can't pay for health care

#28

Post by zdragnar »

elzbardico wrote: post #7

What is incredibly amazing is how much health care costs in the US. Government expenditures Per Capita are over twice of the nations like Canada, UK, Australia, and Japan. And most of this for medicare, for which only a fraction of the population is eligible. And yet, this is not enough, and people need private health insurance. Then you look at the prices of common medications, and most of them (mind you, a lot of t…

An interesting story I heard on the radio:

A father got a call from his daughter that she went to the emergency room, because she had a vitamin C pill stuck in her throat and she was scared. In NY, they are required to give an estimate of costs, and estimated $1600 for the exam and the can of ginger ale they gave her to drink so she could swallow it.

Fast forward a few weeks, and they got the bill. They ended up charging his insurance $2,200, and the insurance company valued the trip at $3,500 (presumably to bump up his co-pay? not sure).

The radio host (a lawyer) recommended reporting both the hospital and insurance company to the state regulators who oversee hospitals and insurance companies. Obviously, this is an instance of price gouging and abuse.

The question I have is, are state regulators sufficiently empowered to take action here, not only to help this family, but prevent such abuse in the future? I think the answer is likely not- part of the benefit of being so heavily regulated is they seem to get more leeway.

Personally, my wife went into an ER for a migraine that had lasted 3 days. A few drugs, an hour stay in a dark room, and we were sent on our way. This was not a busy ER; I think there was maybe one other patient there the entire time we were. After whatever the insurance covered, I was expected to pay $900. One of the drugs was given intravenously so it acted faster, but... if these had been available OTC or if doctors could operate out of pharmacies and prescribe something on the spot, it would have been so, so much cheaper.

The joys of regulatory capture, I guess.

Re: Banks and hospitals are cashing in when patients can't pay for health care

#29

Post by willcipriano »

Loudergood wrote: post #16
willcipriano wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medicine is the most regulated and subsidized industry in the US. This is theft by regulatory capture[0]. Globalism is magically not applied to medicine, simply stopping being protectionist on prescription drugs would save consumers billions of dollars a year, it's easy, it's obvious and no politician will ever do it. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

Not no politician. https://khn.org/news/article/drug-imports-canada-senate-sand...

Both of those guys face lots of negative press, any perceived slip up and the "other sides" journalists are chomping at the bit to call them out. In my experience the more milquetoast, don't rock the boat types tend to get the kid gloves.

We also had a president who said he wanted to implement this once. Not that he was perfect but amoung other things they fabricated evidence of some weird pee fetish and attached a narrative that Tom Clancy would consider too unrealistic to publish and repeated it on the major news networks non-stop. When you control a 1/5th of the GDP all sorts of funny little things like that seem to happen.

Re: Banks and hospitals are cashing in when patients can't pay for health care

#30

Post by phkahler »

sokoloff wrote: post #19
elzbardico wrote: post #7

What is incredibly amazing is how much health care costs in the US. Government expenditures Per Capita are over twice of the nations like Canada, UK, Australia, and Japan. And most of this for medicare, for which only a fraction of the population is eligible. And yet, this is not enough, and people need private health insurance. Then you look at the prices of common medications, and most of them (mind you, a lot of t…

> most of this for medicare, for which only a fraction of the population is eligible. The fraction of the population that is eligible for Medicare skews much, much older than the overall population and so is exactly the population that I'd expect to be more costly.

>> The fraction of the population that is eligible for Medicare skews much, much older than the overall population and so is exactly the population that I'd expect to be more costly.

This is another reason to decouple insurance from our employment. These plans are cheaper because the pool of people is all reasonably healthy, and able to work.

The purpose of insurance is to amortize costs over time and population, but the industry has successfully dumped the highest cost patients onto the government plan.

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