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We did a similar thing at BetterDoctor a few weeks ago: http://pricemaps.betterdoctor.com/
Cool! Did you get the data from: http://health.usnews.com/best-hospitals/rankings I'd love to talk more about how this can be taken to the next step. Can't find your contact info in your profile--mind pinging me at: neilsharma101 at gmail dot com
We tried to compare the hospital quality with the prices.
Who cares? My insurance co-pay is the same either way, which is exactly the problem. There is zero incentive to shop on price. Btw, nice work :)
We'll see how Obamacare deals with it though.
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The issue is that if you have insurance, you're not paying the charge master rate or the Medicare rate, you're paying the negotiated (and likely non-public) rate for your insurer. The 20% co-insurance you pay is based on the negotiated rate.
Exactly. If this knew what my insurance company had negotiated for the procedure, and I could input my policy details to figure out what my personal cost would be then I can totally see the usefulness. But as a consumer I just have no idea at all what knowing the Medicare reimbursement prices tells me. If I assume that the relative differences that Medicare has negotiated are similar to the relative differences my in…
If the population goes to a number of different providers, then the insurance company can play hardball and say "if you don't take this rate, you're out of our network, good luck with that". In those cases, they'll negotiate an MS-DRG + X% rate.
The reason why negotiated rates with private insurers are non-public is because it's a negotiating tool. If hospital A gets paid $5K for a heart attack and finds out hospital B a block away gets paid $7K for the same thing, the next round of negotiations will be very rowdy.
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Even with insurance your coinsurance could be up to 20%. So, for complex procedures, it is very useful to see if you can get it done some place cheaper. First example of intracranial hemorrhage, price ranges from $9,540 - $234,913. Certainly gives a lot of input to make an appropriate decision. Very unlikely that without medicare negotiation, prices will magically converge to some middle point for all of them.
Your point is a good one, but maybe a different procedure would be a better example- most people suffering from an intracranial hemorrhage aren't in a position to do a whole of of comparison shopping on where to have it taken care of.
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Thanks. Yeah, a lot of people travel abroad to save money, but its possible to find comparable prices nearby too. Patients aren't trained to shop around with procedures though. The Obama Administration has tried to make pricing more transparent--this particular data set is publicly available. Here it is: https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Sta...
As someone with a disabled mother on medicaid (whom I spend tens of thousands of dollars a year on for prescriptions and care), thank you.
I'm not questioning your story, just genuinely curious what the extra costs are.
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If you were a doctor, would you rather charge more, or less? What keeps you from charging the highest fees in the world? Your reputation. If you're not the best, you cannot charge the most. All of capitalism works this way.
You forgot things like consumers needing information and having a choice. Those need to be present for capitalism to work. For fun I ask how much it is going to cost when going to my doctor. They refuse to tell me. They can't even make an estimate (tens? hundreds? thousands?) Even after seeing the doctor they can't. I pull out my card and say "I would like to pay now". I get told I have to wait for the bill. It is vi…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even with insurance your coinsurance could be up to 20%. So, for complex procedures, it is very useful to see if you can get it done some place cheaper. First example of intracranial hemorrhage, price ranges from $9,540 - $234,913. Certainly gives a lot of input to make an appropriate decision. Very unlikely that without medicare negotiation, prices will magically converge to some middle point for all of them.
The issue is that if you have insurance, you're not paying the charge master rate or the Medicare rate, you're paying the negotiated (and likely non-public) rate for your insurer. The 20% co-insurance you pay is based on the negotiated rate.
US Patients go to south america and Asia to get treated. I don't think shopping around the country hospitals to figure out a good option is going to be a big problem. This is a good first step.
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As someone with a disabled mother on medicaid (whom I spend tens of thousands of dollars a year on for prescriptions and care), thank you.
Can I ask why you're spending thousands of dollars on Rx and care? From what I've gathered Medicaid patients have co-pays of $3-$5 on drugs and very small office visit co-pays. I'm not questioning your story, just genuinely curious what the extra costs are.