111–120 of 121 posts
We pay far more money than anyone else, and for a poorer outcome. I only hope that others read something like this and grasp the importance of finding a solution.
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The consumer also can't entirely walk away from the food market. That doesn't make food prices go out of control.
According to USDA in 2011 15% of US households suffered from food insecurity - for them they are already out of control. And there are the other couple of billion people on the planet that cannot afford a dollar per day for a meal.
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The best we can hope for is people attempting to take their personal bias out of reporting and investigate the full story, especially when what happened contradicts their worldview. Real journalists do this. News Corporation (Fox News/WSJ/etc) specifically does the opposite.
You are not being very observant if you think that Fox News, WSJ, etc. are the only media outlets that have a bias.
A month ago, I was traveling in Germany with my family and my daughter had an emergency, so I had to go to a German hospital in the middle of the night. Within 1 hour, they had given my daughter an ultrasound and two doses of medicine to treat her problem, the cost to me: $130 euro, and I didn't even use my health insurance (which does cover international emergencies) 3 years ago, I had a gallbladder attack in Shangh…
I used to be on a High Deductible Health Plan, which is designed to be just like the author suggests: only for catastrophes. For anything else, you use a Health Savings Account (a tax free account you put money into) and use it to just pay cash prices. IT WAS HORRIBLE. The concept of course, is great. But the problem is one of chicken and egg. Because the entire system is set up for 3rd party payment, NOBODY, and I m…
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Is it possible to pay cash prices without an HSA? I'm under the impression that if you have health insurance (high deductible or not) you are required to use it. The one time I asked for a cash price for a shot at a hospital, it was pretty quick for the receptionist to give it to me. (Incidentally, $150 cash vs. the $300 bill that came in the mail later, since I used my insurance. For a shot of Rhogam.)
That depends. Some providers are contractually bound (and in some jurisdictions laws also apply) into "preferred provider contracts" that require the provider to bill your insurance and disallow them from taking cash.
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Is it possible to pay cash prices without an HSA? I'm under the impression that if you have health insurance (high deductible or not) you are required to use it. The one time I asked for a cash price for a shot at a hospital, it was pretty quick for the receptionist to give it to me. (Incidentally, $150 cash vs. the $300 bill that came in the mail later, since I used my insurance. For a shot of Rhogam.)
I could certainly be wrong, but I'm not aware of any requirement to always use insurance. However, if you pay for treatment out of pocket wouldn't you still need to involve your insurance company somehow in order for your payment to be counted towards your deductible?
If I have a $5k deductible, I could pay cash and claim it was $5k for anything, and that now the insurance companies needs to start paying their share. I'm sure they wouldn't like that.
"Take the examples of Lasik eye surgery or cosmetic surgery. These services are not covered by insurance. Providers compete on the basis of quality, outcomes and price. And prices have continually dropped as quality and services have improved—unlike the rest of health care." Sadly, most people forget this. They think that healthcare is somehow immune from the laws of economics, that it is "special."
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How does that make the article terrible? He's not saying that this is a good thing he's using this as an example of how broken the medical system is. Did you read to the end? Or did you just get annoyed after the first few paragraphs and write this screed?
The author is arguing that we should use a free market for healthcare. He cites exactly one anecdote where a free market exchange happened to have worked out in the patient's benefit and then generalizes that to the entire healthcare industry. But he completely fails to take into account the fact that healthcare is about as far from an efficient market as you can get: 1. Patients often need healthcare right now or th…
But, this is not how the free market works. When I bought my entertainment centre it cost around $3000 after haggling ... the MRSP for all the pieces was around $3500.
This example was the MRSP was $23000 AFTER the insurance covered a bunch of it. The negotiated cost was $3000.
In a free market system the MRSP would come down and none of these points would really matter (the constrained people would pay $3500 instead of the haggled price of $3000)
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I used to be on a High Deductible Health Plan, which is designed to be just like the author suggests: only for catastrophes. For anything else, you use a Health Savings Account (a tax free account you put money into) and use it to just pay cash prices. IT WAS HORRIBLE. The concept of course, is great. But the problem is one of chicken and egg. Because the entire system is set up for 3rd party payment, NOBODY, and I m…
Since you mentioned Bush, how has Obama improved the situation? He wants MORE third party payment, in fact he wants exclusively that.
I think the notion of Obamacare representing what Obama, or even most people on the left, "wanted" is patently false. Obamacare isn't what they wanted. Its what they could get after the insurance lobby and the Republican establishment scared old people into thinking a single payer system would involve them being subjected to "death panels." Let's not forget the signs labelled "Keep the government off my Medicare".
The Republican party once (correctly in my mind) opposed Medicare. Now they rely on its recipients to keep them in office, and even expand it (Bush). Which is proof to me that they are the political party of the "I am doing well in teh current system, so don't change anything!" crowd than the actual libertarian reformers they pretend to be.
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I used to be on a High Deductible Health Plan, which is designed to be just like the author suggests: only for catastrophes. For anything else, you use a Health Savings Account (a tax free account you put money into) and use it to just pay cash prices. IT WAS HORRIBLE. The concept of course, is great. But the problem is one of chicken and egg. Because the entire system is set up for 3rd party payment, NOBODY, and I m…
wasn't there a Show HN recently that solved this exact problem of exposing pricing of medical procedures and such.
Its also useless for anything other than stuff done in hospitals.