81–90 of 149 posts
Imagine if they passed a common sense requirement that is you want any payment it needs to be a single bill, day of service, plain language. I was thinking we should use the proposition system here in CA to get this through- who wouldn't vote for it.
What happens if people move to a new address, or to a new country? The hospital mails the bills to the old address but nobody will know?
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Corporate regulatory capture.
And the institutionalization and legal enshrining[1] of work ethic. Basically the two tier healthcare system has a legal basis for it's existence and structural support in the form of economic incentives to continue in perpetuity, and sustain itself. This is going to seem either extremely obvious or completely bonkers depending on your point of view. so it makes an interesting scissor statement. Furthermore one compo…
During WWII, Congress enacted price and wage controls that have caused us a lot of problems. With millions of men out of the labor force (because they were conscripted), and no way to compete with other employers by raising salaries, employers started offering perks instead. Things like tipping in restaurants and health insurance paid for by your employer became common and eventually ubiquitous. Before WWII, only a few percent of the population used health insurance. Everyone paid for health care out of pocket, and overall it was such a low percentage of people’s incomes that nobody worried much about it. You could trivially compare prices between doctors, for one thing.
What baffles me are these people who constantly show up to defend the US health care system, when there is clearly a plethora of real end user testimony showing how detrimental it is to the health of most United States citizens. Maybe HN isn't the best site to discuss this on, I'm guessing most of you work for some large tech sector business that offers good insurance. But most of the world is not made up of tech wor…
Then they have some catastrophic incident (car crash, cancer, heart attack, etc. etc.) and they're bankrupt in a few years and become very, very strong proponents of universal healthcare.
I think it's exceptionally hard for people to understand the system until it personally impacts their life in a very big way.
I'm not sure what to do about it. Maybe as a start every health insurance provider should be forced to provide facts about customers with the same insurance who had catastrophic events and how that worked out for them over 3-5 years.
Every interaction I have involves checking out, standing before a sign that says, "all fees must be paid at time of service." I pay then, then months later get more bills to be paid well after the time of service.
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I have great insurance through my employer. Last week my spouse was suppose to go in for a surgery that multiple doctors made it clear she needed. We were on the books for months for the surgery. Insurance denied it the day before, throwing all our plans up into the air. The surgeon suggested getting a different surgery that wouldn't fix the problem. The idea is that when it didn't work it would act as evidence to co…
Get the surgery, get notarized items from multiple docs, talk to a lawyer. Healthcare insurance doesn't get to dictate your healthcare directly. They aren't doctors, and open themselves up to liability if we don't push back.
Imo one part of the confusion and complexity is pricing. There is no standardized pricing. Many countries with government run healthcare systems solve this by not showing patients the prices and standardizing the price they pay to doctors etc. in the US you have the hospitals / health care providers, insurance companies, and patients all negotiating with each other. Some state governments tried to mandate a defined l…
Mixing profit with healthcare is bound to lead to trouble. Patients got no choice but to accept the abuses of the system when they are sick. Like agreeing to things under duress.