161–170 of 231 posts
Price transparency is a key part of Obamacare and is apparently beginning to work. For example, insurance companies in Oregon reduced premiums after seeing competitor prices [1]. 1: http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2013/05/two_orego...
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I'd look at good old supply and demand before reaching for "over-regulating is distorting the market." Demand for Lasik and cosmetic surgery is much more elastic because they're not life-saving or otherwise necessary procedures. Meanwhile, supply is relatively higher because they're relatively cheap procedures to provide. They can be done in outpatient centers instead of hospitals, usually don't require general anest…
Medicine doesn't really follow supply and demand. If you install more CT or MRI scanners, you do more scanning. Demand follows supply. This is not helped by it only rarely being the patient who pays directly (usually insurance or taxpayer). People tend to do what their doctors suggest and go where their doctors say to go. There was a great article on this I read about a year ago. I thought it was in the Economist, bu…
In it, he makes a specific criticism that not only do hospitals that purchase diagnostic scanners tend to make greater use of it, but that quite often, an above-average count of referrals to diagnostic imaging centers (which are places which only do MRI and CT scan work) are one of the leading indicators of out-of-whack pricing for a given hospital.
Patients still reflexively follow their doctors orders. So if their doctor says an MRI or two is required before he proceeds with treatment, the patient will happily get the MRI done.
Changing the ingrained behavior of patients in this regard is a must if we expect to be able to control this particular aspect of medical cost increases.
sbercus10 has done this thread a huge favor in his comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6015542) where he provides the following link to a PDF of Brill's Time article:
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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.
To give you an idea of how big of a problem not paying is, I'll relate a story I heard from a small business owner in California: 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 chi…
Otherwise, please tell me which hospital is giving away free service to the uninsured.
They have avoided government regulation and control in that area by choosing not to accept Medicaid or Medicare payments."
This is simply not true. If they were undercutting Medicare with their pricing, the government would likely have issue with it (i.e. if they were contracted with Medicare but charging Medicare more than what they charge other insurers/patients - this never happens). But their pricing is multiple times what a Medicare claimant would have to pay, so it's a non-issue.
Take, for example, the One Medical Group. They accept Medicare and although the services they provide are limited to primary care, they are transparent with their basic fees. http://www.onemedical.com/nyc/pricing/insurance
Our own medical group is heading in the direction of transparent pricing as well, and we accept Medicare.
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…
Wow, this (along with the whole health care thing) makes me glad I live in the UK. Here renting property is very well regulated, you put down a security deposit when you move in (usually 1.5 months rent) and then any charges like this are taken from that. The best part is the security deposit legally has to be left with a third party (DPS), and then if the land lord wants to keep any of it, they have to go through th…
If you move to the US and have to rent, find a private owner renting their condo or similar. Never live in an "apartment community" with a corporate owner.
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The free market in medicine is plain weird Says you. Time and again, Lasik surgery and cosmetic surgeries not covered by insurance or hindered by over-regulation have shown us that transparent pricing and competition work to make those procedures more affordable -- just like these forces work in other markets. The State has perverted the medical market for more than half a century and you're just used to seeing it in…
It's also important to consider that Lasik and cosmetic surgeries are elective procedures characterized by elastic demand. Having a trauma surgeon remove a ruptured spleen, or being treated for a heart attack, are situations where demand is completely inelastic. One might shop around for the best way to spend a spare $10,000 for an eye lift, but who can be expected to shop for an economically satisfying deal while in…
Not true. Even in a sprawling place like Oklahoma City, most of the middle class lives within safe transport distance of several hospitals. It would be perfectly rational for them to tell the ambulance crew to drive another five minutes to save $25,000.
Most emergencies have plenty of time for price shopping.
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To give you an idea of how big of a problem not paying is, I'll relate a story I heard from a small business owner in California: 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 chi…
This isn't true. They only have to provide emergency services, and they still charge for them, just not up front. If anyone did that, they would still receive bills in the mail and have derogatory information on their credit report. Otherwise, please tell me which hospital is giving away free service to the uninsured.
When asked about billing they simply said "I don't have insurance". Many hospitals, including the DSH (disproportionate share hospitals) write these things off all the time. The hospital just doesn't bother following up. Are you going to spend $200 to chase down a $100 hospital bill?
One thing to keep in mind is that there's more to good medical care than a fair price: Post-op infection rate - do all clinical employees regularly wash their hands before and after each patient encounter? Re-admission rate - does the institution or surgeon do enough cases of a particular procedure to be proficient? Error Rate - Are pre-op checklists ALWAYS used? Post-op care - Are supportive therapies like Physiothe…
Great story but "OKLAHOMA CITY – An Oklahoma City surgery center is offering a new kind of price transparency, posting guaranteed all-inclusive surgery prices online. The move is revolutionizing medical billing in Oklahoma and around the world." Around the world? Really?
By around the world I think they mean Canada :)