Earlier quoted context omitted.
Copying my comment below. The government not only allows healthcare providers to reveal their prices, it encourages it. The graf about the government is a political statement, not a policy fact, and does not belong in a news story. ----- Medicare/caid prices are standardized and public. They also release data on what specific hospitals bill for the most common procedures. http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-a…
Part of the Affordable Care Act is a requirement for hospitals to bill cash payers no more than someone who has insurance must pay. So if insurance companies negotiate a rate for a procedure, stay, or the like, and you pay cash the hospital needs to charge you the same or less.
Hospital creates bidding war by posting pricing online
141–150 of 231 posts
Re: Hospital creates bidding war by posting pricing online
#142Re: Hospital creates bidding war by posting pricing online
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
You don't think people with cancer research which clinic to go to? I know if I had cancer I dam well would.
I wasn't talking specifically about people with cancer who have plenty of time to research which clinic is most cost effective. I stated in my post: "If I'm in the hospital with an emergency or critical condition , I probably don't have the option of fully researching or understanding my options." Just because situations exist where you have time to research, doesn't mean you always have time to do so. And a healthca…
I agree that no one will do a price-check when they are on death's doorstop, but there are many instances where doing a price check for medical procedures is possible.
Re: Hospital creates bidding war by posting pricing online
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
I worked in a billing office for 5 years, there are literally thousands of codes for EACH insurance company, again EACH insurance company. The reason the cost of healthcare is so high is because medicare pays roughly 15% of a bill, others are somewhere between 20-50% of a bill depending. That is to say if the doctor charges you $40,000 you pay your 10% co-pay of $4,000 and the insurance then only pays maybe another $…
The reason the cost of healthcare is so high is because medicare pays roughly 15% of a bill, others are somewhere between 20-50% of a bill depending. That is to say if the doctor charges you $40,000 you pay your 10% co-pay of $4,000 and the insurance then only pays maybe another $8,000. Another reason is the supply of doctors is artificially restricted by the AMA.
Re: Hospital creates bidding war by posting pricing online
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
A couple of months ago, Time magazine (of all places) did a really good story about the lack of price transparency in healthcare and how that may well be the single largest contributor to the burgeoning healthcare costs in the US. I think it is behind a paywall, here is a starter though: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2136867,00.... In a stunning example of competence and efficiency, the US governme…
Fellow high deductible plan-holder here. Have you run into the circumstance yet where a provider is under an exclusive contract w/ your insurer and, once the provider finds out who your insurer is, is obligated to refuse to allow you to pay cash? I've had this happen 3 times in the last year and it's driving me mad. The providers were unwilling to talk to me unless I divulged my insurer, and when I did they were then…
On more than one occasion after having an appointment scheduled, and mentioning to the provider that we have a high deductible, doctors' office staff have changed their stories and claim that they didn't accept our insurance or that they weren't accepting new patients (after already putting family members "into the book" for an appointment, even; one provider used one excuse after another, despite prominently advertising in the local paper that they are looking for new patients and "accept all insurance"). Another office actually claimed that the doctor had gone to lunch and wouldn't be back for 3 hours...immediately after I told her our deductible amount--her mouth dropped open and she ran back into the back and came back with the lunch story. I don't understand it, because I offered to pay up front and the care was always for simple issues that never would have hit the deductible nor broken the bank anyway (a flu in one case, a basic checkup and blood tests in another). I assume it's illegal, too, otherwise the universal response wouldn't be a stammered excuse.
This kind of behavior does help to weed out bad doctors/doctor's offices (net good, I guess?), but in a situation where your issue isn't bad/acute enough for the emergency room and not forestallable enough to wait a month to get an appointment for a good doctor, it's really frustrating.
Luckily, there's a nice urgent care locally with prices on the walls, accepts real money and even gives a cash discount, and handles the basics...but for traditional/specialist doctor's visits, I no longer offer up any information about the fact that the deductible is high and we're paying for services ourselves before the appointment.
Re: Hospital creates bidding war by posting pricing online
#146I 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…
Re: Hospital creates bidding war by posting pricing online
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
In an effort to provide his blue collar workers with a decent benefits package, he setup a health insurance plan. After 6 months or so, his HR person came back and said "none of the employees have used the insurance at all!" This was weird since these workers had families and obviously children get sick on a regular basis.
He spoke to his employees and asked why they weren't using their insurance. The answer? Instead of having to pay a $20 co-pay to see a doctor, they could just go to the hospital and say they were uninsured. If they did that, they didn't pay a dime for their healthcare.
Re: Hospital creates bidding war by posting pricing online
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I dream of a day when I can walk into an area which offers 'services' and be offered a pricing chart. I don't want to be offered a pricing chart when I have a kidney stone or get violently mugged. When that happens I don't want to have to deal with that sort of thing. The free market in medicine is plain weird. Everyone needs the doctor on occasion, and everyone needs tyres on their car. Both things are pretty stan…
This must a a US thing - I have never seen an advert on TV for a healthcare clinic of any sort that I can recall. I saw a poster at a cinema recently for a medical clinic, which I remember as it was so unusual.
I personally think it's a good thing.
Re: Hospital creates bidding war by posting pricing online
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because while demand for healthcare is inelastic, more healthcare can actually be a bad thing. For example, old people (who are big customers) are often best if they are told to just go home, and look after themselves. Cutting up old people can be a waste of time (since they are unlikely to live a lot longer), and can actually reduce their life expectancy (since they don't always survive surgery). Also, the money the…
Someone's gotta sell the meth, work at McDonald's, mow the lawns (well, not mine... I mow it myself), make the firecrackers, clean the toilets, etc. It's all about how we allocate this labor, I guess. Paying everyone the same salary leads to underperformance, so we encourage competition. I'm sure there's a better way, but it probably won't be a total reversal, only a modification, of what we have.
and someone does indeed do those things, but imagine if there isn't anyone to do it because everyone is so well educated that it's "beyond" them. Those jobs will "get done" initially at a higher price, but then because there's profit to be made, a smart individual will inevitably invent a machimne to the job, and thus, the total output of society increases (sure there's a turbulent period of transition, but that's acceptable in the grand scheme of things).
Re: Hospital creates bidding war by posting pricing online
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
The reason the cost of healthcare is so high is because medicare pays roughly 15% of a bill, others are somewhere between 20-50% of a bill depending. That is to say if the doctor charges you $40,000 you pay your 10% co-pay of $4,000 and the insurance then only pays maybe another $8,000. Another reason is the supply of doctors is artificially restricted by the AMA.
So we replace doctors with software. Will it be perfect? Not at first. But eventually...