$25 in government hospital in India. $100 in Private ones.
Why an MRI costs $1,080 in America and $280 in France
81–90 of 223 posts
Re: Why an MRI costs $1,080 in America and $280 in France
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is because no one is quite sure what it should cost. Literally. The hospital will try and charge whatever wild number they can get away with, and the insurance company will negotiate it down to whatever they feel they're willing to pay. My wife is a nurse and has seen this play out multiple times with patients and their families. Just to give you an idea of how disconnected the price is from logical factors, con…
People argue that the current system works because capitalism is more efficient. But when the prices are hidden from the customer by either fudging prices or hiding costs behind a fixed fee in the form of insurance the system is broken.
people forget that efficient markets hypothesis requires perfect information and it seems that hiding information about costs is standard business practice.
Re: Why an MRI costs $1,080 in America and $280 in France
#83Without yet reading any of the other comments, I have an anecdote that may be interesting to others: One of my father's business partners has a mother that lives in France. She is ~88 years old, and the family's net-worth is on the order of 100s of millions ($USD). She had a medical condition which required surgery, but due to her age, she was not eligible in France, so she had to come to the US for her surgery. So, it seems like the phrase, "The US has the best healthcare money can buy" still stands.
[I will now read the other 80 comments...]
Re: Why an MRI costs $1,080 in America and $280 in France
#84And that's why Obama's public healthcare idea was good.
Re: Why an MRI costs $1,080 in America and $280 in France
#85[deleted]
Re: Why an MRI costs $1,080 in America and $280 in France
#86The US has inexpensive MRIs as well. This nationwide chain provides MRIs as low as $335 depending on the state. http://a2zimaging.com/ No insurance accepted, no payment plans. Those cost money. Just charges the cost.
Same reason why lasik became so cheap so quickly. The free market actually at work. Especially effective on technological product based innovation and pricing.
If they'd really get out of the way, MRIs could perhaps cost $200 in the USA due to the volume that could be absorbed by clinics.
Re: Why an MRI costs $1,080 in America and $280 in France
#87You want to hear David Sedaris on this. He was amazed that his visits to the dentist and to hospitals in France where so cheap they didn't even bother to charge him. He had to force them to bill him and it would be for tens not hundreds or thousands of dollars.
Social medicine works in Europe and in Cuba, where I've also seen it first hand. This is why it is so important to preserve the NHS here in the UK.
Re: Why an MRI costs $1,080 in America and $280 in France
#88What annoys me as an American about our health care is not that some other countries achieve better outcomes at much lower cost--it is that they do so in so many different ways. For instance, if they all did it by having the government completely run the health care system, with all doctors working for government hospitals and clinics, and being trained in government medical schools, with all costs set by the governm…
It's not difficult to figure out what happens to a marketplace when you remove the competition with government mandate. America's health care system has been hyper regulated for decades. You can't even shop across state lines effectively.
We have the worst of both systems. We have enough government interference to drive up prices through restriction of competition, bad regulation, bad mandates; and we have government sponsored 'private' entities there to capture the high prices from the stagnant and controlled markets.
Re: Why an MRI costs $1,080 in America and $280 in France
#89What annoys me as an American about our health care is not that some other countries achieve better outcomes at much lower cost--it is that they do so in so many different ways. For instance, if they all did it by having the government completely run the health care system, with all doctors working for government hospitals and clinics, and being trained in government medical schools, with all costs set by the governm…
This kind of problem seems fairly widespread in America. Americans are incredibly self-confident, innovative and have achieved a great deal as a nation. They are also extremely proud of their country. Unfortunately this combination often leads them to assume things are good purely because they are American. They tend to accept their own familiar values and ideas and readily dismiss alternatives because that would be…
Americans have known for a very long time that we were getting ripped off in the health care system. It has been a growing problem for decades.
I don't think there is any assumption at all that our health care system works as it stands today.
Re: Why an MRI costs $1,080 in America and $280 in France
#90What annoys me as an American about our health care is not that some other countries achieve better outcomes at much lower cost--it is that they do so in so many different ways. For instance, if they all did it by having the government completely run the health care system, with all doctors working for government hospitals and clinics, and being trained in government medical schools, with all costs set by the governm…
This kind of problem seems fairly widespread in America. Americans are incredibly self-confident, innovative and have achieved a great deal as a nation. They are also extremely proud of their country. Unfortunately this combination often leads them to assume things are good purely because they are American. They tend to accept their own familiar values and ideas and readily dismiss alternatives because that would be…
A major driver of U.S. costs that isn't discussed in the article is our parasite lawyer class, who drive up the cost of insurance for doctors and lead to widespread over-testing or "defensive medicine". Few Americans are proud of our litigious society.