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Show HN: I mapped US medical prices. Save thousands by driving a few miles

bestmedicareprice.com

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Re: Show HN: I mapped US medical prices. Save thousands by driving a few miles

#92
post #87
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing. I wasn't aware of Medicaid patients who had to pay those types of costs. I guess my question is, what if a Medicaid patient in IN was truly destitute? There must be some mechanism for patients who can't afford those types of costs.

ER visits. Seriously. An ER is required by law to treat anyone who comes in. If you really can't pay, go to the ER. Some argue this is why healthcare costs so much because ERs have to be paid for.

People often claim that, but it's not a particularly credible argument. Emergency room visits account for less than 2% of total healthcare spending in the US.

http://newsroom.acep.org/index.php?s=20301&item=29928

Re: Show HN: I mapped US medical prices. Save thousands by driving a few miles

#93
This is cute, but it is based on a flawed premise. There are not "prices" for medical procedures and even the providers don't know what they are going to charge. Anecdata: when my wife was pregnant I asked the hospital what are the basic charges for normal obstetric delivery, since we were paying out of pocket. I got a reply in writing that it was $20k, a suspiciously round number without itemization. The baby comes and there are no complications and no anesthetic and the attending physician never even showed up for some reason. So it was in every way the cheapest possible way to have a baby short of squatting over a blanket.

Needless to say that this American hospital would not even have admitted us without a certified check in advance, so we had spotted them the $20k. Over the next six weeks I get literally dozens of bills. I get a bill from the attending obstetrician who wasn't even present. I get bills for anesthesia that wasn't administered. I get bills in total of over $31k. I was uninsured but I'm not some chump, so my attorney sent these people sternly worded letters and we held the line at $20k which I think anyone would agree is already a ridiculous price in the first place.

Point is, nobody in this system has any idea what the price of anything is. There's no rate card. It's a collective emergent phenomenon that prints invoices. Nothing more.

Re: Show HN: I mapped US medical prices. Save thousands by driving a few miles

#94
I don't know if I'm just completely retarded or hitting a bug. How do I use the "Select a Procedure..." box? Typing into it does nothing. If I click on the box (or the down triangle), it brings up a menu with only one option, which says "Select a Procedure..." and does nothing. This is on Chrome on Windows. I'm in Los Angeles, if that matters.

Re: Show HN: I mapped US medical prices. Save thousands by driving a few miles

#95
post #87
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing. I wasn't aware of Medicaid patients who had to pay those types of costs. I guess my question is, what if a Medicaid patient in IN was truly destitute? There must be some mechanism for patients who can't afford those types of costs.

ER visits. Seriously. An ER is required by law to treat anyone who comes in. If you really can't pay, go to the ER. Some argue this is why healthcare costs so much because ERs have to be paid for.

> An ER is required by law to treat anyone who comes in.

They're basically allowed to make you "stable" and then send you out into the cold. They might do more but they don't have to.

Re: Show HN: I mapped US medical prices. Save thousands by driving a few miles

#96

I don't know if I'm just completely retarded or hitting a bug. How do I use the "Select a Procedure..." box? Typing into it does nothing. If I click on the box (or the down triangle), it brings up a menu with only one option, which says "Select a Procedure..." and does nothing. This is on Chrome on Windows. I'm in Los Angeles, if that matters.

Oh it might be this syntax error on line 21 of index.js:

Is: query.ascending)(

Presumably should be: query.ascending();

Re: Show HN: I mapped US medical prices. Save thousands by driving a few miles

#97
post #87
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for sharing. I wasn't aware of Medicaid patients who had to pay those types of costs. I guess my question is, what if a Medicaid patient in IN was truly destitute? There must be some mechanism for patients who can't afford those types of costs.

ER visits. Seriously. An ER is required by law to treat anyone who comes in. If you really can't pay, go to the ER. Some argue this is why healthcare costs so much because ERs have to be paid for.

No. This is wrong, yet people keep citing this.

EMTALA [0] requires the hospital to stabilize the patient, ie, make it so that it is no longer an emergency (the "E" in "ER"). If you "really can't pay" and it's not an emergency, you likely will find yourself in collections from the hospital.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_and...

Re: Show HN: I mapped US medical prices. Save thousands by driving a few miles

#99

Assuming this data is from the Medicare (insurance program for those >65) dataset released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services earlier this year ( http://go.cms.gov/1bowKJA ) I have a couple of points to make: 1.) Not sure if you grabbed "charges" or "payments", but "charges" are what the providers (hospitals) billed to Medicare, and "payments" are what Medicare actually paid the providers. "Payments" w…

Nice! Me and my friend made this app back in a few weeks ago, and here is the link.http://pricemaps.betterdoctor.com/#/

1. We used the 'Average Payment' for the actual number shown on the site. 2. Even though it's irrelevant, but it actually goes back to you by your co-pay and other expenses to you. Not 100% sure though. The point in our app is that, we want to compare the price vs quality in the US top hospitals. They actually vary a lot. 3,4 I agree. Co-pay is what you pay mostly. 5. We cleaned up the procedure names manually, and matched the procedure related specialties to the hospital specialty ranking made by US News, and it gives much better perspective to the users.

Nice to see people doing more health related stuff out there!

Re: Show HN: I mapped US medical prices. Save thousands by driving a few miles

#100
post #30

Nice! Me and my friend Anders made a bit better version of this, at http://pricemaps.betterdoctor.com/#/ Check it out!

Major joint replacement is much cheaper than Major Joint Replacement.

Yes, that was a bug.

They actually correspond to two different slugs in our database. One that has higher price is pointed to the more complicated procedures that involved multiple complications, while the other one is simpler procedure without any complications.

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