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Hospital creates bidding war by posting pricing online

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Re: Hospital creates bidding war by posting pricing online

#121

Post by badclient »

sanderjd wrote: post #114
badclient wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, just so everyone knows, it's pretty easy to negotiate down your bill. The reason healthcare is so expensive is so many people don't pay it. If you are willing to pay say 40% of your bill it's already 25% better than medicare. This. My Dad is a surgeon and the stories I hear are incredible. Once he operated on a child whose insurance was out of network. So the insurance company writes the parents a check to give…

This is the part I'm always curious about in these discussions: how do people get away with not paying? Is it a debt that is often discharged in bankruptcy or is there some other mechanism by which the debt is erased?

It is a combination. First, healthcare debt isn't weighted as heavily on credit reports. Second, healthcare is one of the few businesses where it is illegal to deny services before payment. You can't walk into a walmart, grab a candy bar and just walk out. With emergency healthcare, you can do just that and sadly, too many people take advantage of it.

Re: Hospital creates bidding war by posting pricing online

#122

Post by jnardiello »

While i know how health-care is working in the US, every time i read something about it i'm astonished and incredibly sad. How broke can a system be to put a price on health? And everybody cheering that someone is doing it in a trasparent way. Woooow. I wonder how you will all react if you'll find out, in future, that the surgery/procedure you actually need is too expensive for your pockets and not covere by the insurance (if you are elegible/have one).

Sorry to say this but: This whole system is a shame. And i just can't understand why the people in the US just don't realize it.

Re: Hospital creates bidding war by posting pricing online

#123

Post by DigitalSea »

When you think of upfront pricing it just makes sense. Recently someone posted a breakdown of their surgery here on HN (don't remember the kind of surgery it was, but it totalled about $30k), I don't understand how a hospital with the same medically trained staff as any other hospital (with exception of specialists of course which would vary) can be 4 times the price as this hospital is offerng to do it for and most likely the same level of care. I encourage everyone to read this Harvard Business Review article here which gives some insight into just how the American healtrh system runs: http://hbr.org/web/extras/insight-center/health-care/why-inn...

Re: Hospital creates bidding war by posting pricing online

#124

Post by greedo »

refurb wrote: post #94
jljljl wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither Lasik nor cosmetic surgeries tend to be major issues of life and death, nor do they tend to occur in emergency situations where an informed decision may not be possible. Free markets and transparent pricing that work require that there not be major information asymmetries between supplier and purchaser. If I'm in the hospital with an emergency or critical condition, I probably don't have the option of fully r…

You don't think people with cancer research which clinic to go to? I know if I had cancer I dam well would.

I sure as hell did. I didn't care about the cost, but I sure cared about the outcome.

And even in my case, time wasn't a huge factor. From diagnosis to pre-surgical chemo and radiation, was over a week. And surgery was a month after that. Plenty of time to weigh cost versus performance.

Re: Hospital creates bidding war by posting pricing online

#125

Post by lostlogin »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #117
ahallock wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm deeply sorry for what you had to endure, and I didn't mean to trivialize your situation.

No need to be sorry. I just wanted to demonstrate that even with insurance, healthcare is hard.

I'm not saying it is easy (it often isn't) but government provided accident insurance is provided to all (visitors included) within New Zealand. It provides medical cover and compensation for accidents for pretty much all situations. Wen you have a straight forward accident all is easy and it just works. The trouble arrives when you try to define accident or your injury was difficult to pin point. Botched operation? You might be covered. Infected mosquito bite? Not an accident, not covered. Infected insect bite? Accident, you're covered! Swallowed a chunk of glass? Accident IF it caused injury. No swallowed foreign body is classed as an injury unless it caused damage. Administering and defining this crap must often cost more than just paying out would. If you're filling out the paperwork, be very careful to write as little as possible and use the broadest terms possible.

Re: Hospital creates bidding war by posting pricing online

#126

Post by rubberband »

ambiate wrote: post #14

I dream of a day when I can walk into an area which offers 'services' and be offered a pricing chart. From hospitals, banks, loan officers, home loans, cars, etc. A cryptic itemized list, such as a mortgage's Good Faith Estimate (GFE), which falls short of describing the items in the list still fails my test. This hope is not for me. Its for the misfortunate who run on impulse and have weak mathematical logic. Many p…

I'm curious as to why you singled out the GFE as "falling short". I don't necessarily disagree with you, but between your GFE, TIL and a handful of other things, you "should" be provided with a decent high level overview of your mortgage.

There's certainly room for improvement, but it always seemed leaps and bounds better than, say, an itemized hospital bill.

Re: Hospital creates bidding war by posting pricing online

#128

Post by dmd149 »

So, I've had this idea for a while and I'm wondering why no one has done it yet:

An Expedia for health care services.

You pop in your zip code, the service you need (if you know it), and out comes a list of hospital and doctors with prices for that particular service.

I imagine you could start very simple: call 50-100 clinics and ask how much they would charge for a simple checkup, upload it, see how many people start booking doctor visits via your site.

Check out Zoomcare:

http://www.zoomcare.com/info/services-prices

I went there in Portland and service was great! I loved the transparency. I just wonder why more independent clinics aren't trying this.

Is there some major legal obstacle I'm not seeing?

Re: Hospital creates bidding war by posting pricing online

#129

Post by vidarh »

jnardiello wrote: post #122

While i know how health-care is working in the US, every time i read something about it i'm astonished and incredibly sad. How broke can a system be to put a price on health? And everybody cheering that someone is doing it in a trasparent way. Woooow. I wonder how you will all react if you'll find out, in future, that the surgery/procedure you actually need is too expensive for your pockets and not covere by the insu…

Not so broke, as it turns out, as the US pays more per capita in health care than pretty much every other country on the planet... It's not about being broke, it's about being dysfunctional.
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