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Hospitals lift curtain on prices, reveals giant swings for hips, knees and more

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Re: Hospitals lift curtain on prices, reveals giant swings for hips, knees and more

#211

Post by EliRivers »

axlee wrote: post #9

I thought "free markets" where supposed to facilitate fair value discovery?

Slightly relevant historical aside; when Adam Smith was thinking about his famed free markets, it wasn't government regulation that he wanted them to be free of. They were to be made free BY government regulation and enforcement. What some markets seem to have become (such as this US medical market) are the self-same unfree markets that Adam Smith believed were so damaging.

I for one would not be too upset to see the government hold a gun to the metaphorical heads of various bodies and organisations and tell them that they'd better start delivering a free market pretty damn quickly. Given a political class in the US that seems so obsessed with "free markets" (they're mostly not, of course - it's just sloganeering bullshit to enable weakening of protections and increased screwing over of everyone but the ruling classes), sure is a shitshow of captured, unfree markets.

Re: Hospitals lift curtain on prices, reveals giant swings for hips, knees and more

#212

Post by PeterisP »

maxerickson wrote: post #7
darkwizard42 wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will outright REFUSE to give you a quote...forget out-of-network, even IN network?! This is so astonishing cause you would assume they have NEGOTIATED the rate given its in network so there is little variability in what can be charged by the doctor and what can be thrust upon the customer. ex. if you charge $100K more than other in-network doctors, good luck, cause the insurance company is only paying the doctor…

They bill based on the procedures done and might not have that information until after the fact. I'm not saying it's a good way to do things. Opening a price list, it looks like one hospital charges ~$5000 for a knee replacement without major complications, and then the matching price for one with complications is $30000. So how do they quote that when the complications can be unpredictable? Which of course just says…

Giving out quotes and sticking to them is obviously not an unsolvable problem since the private health industry in so many other countries manages to do that.

Re: Hospitals lift curtain on prices, reveals giant swings for hips, knees and more

#213

Post by chris_wot »

Gatsky wrote: post #200
gregsq wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mother lives in country australia and had pancreatitis it seemed. Hospital, cat and mri’s, spent a week in hospital, sent home, returned after pain returned. More tests, it was decided she should be sent to a larger regional hospital for biopsy. Flew by Lear jet, drove by road home I guess about three hundred miles. Advise was a Whipple procedure. I wasn’t inclined to agree for reasons I won’t go into. I declined…

Yeah it’s pretty good. You can walk into any hospital in Australia and they’ll just look after you and try to do their best to help you. You won’t be asked to pay anything, except maybe some pharmacy fees. Novel concept. And there is also the private system if you want alternatives. Problem is, I don’t think it’s going to last. The ageing population means health costs will spiral, and health budgets will consume an u…

It will last because any government who threatens it will be removed. We have watched what is happening in the U.S. and almost every Australia who is aware of the U.S. model is absolutely appalled.

Actually, the U.S.’s standing in Australia has totally dropped in the last four years, and was already gradually dropping before then.

Re: Hospitals lift curtain on prices, reveals giant swings for hips, knees and more

#214

Post by chris_wot »

aantix wrote: post #161
gregsq wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mother lives in country australia and had pancreatitis it seemed. Hospital, cat and mri’s, spent a week in hospital, sent home, returned after pain returned. More tests, it was decided she should be sent to a larger regional hospital for biopsy. Flew by Lear jet, drove by road home I guess about three hundred miles. Advise was a Whipple procedure. I wasn’t inclined to agree for reasons I won’t go into. I declined…

“Total cost zero”. The cost is never zero. Doctors, nurses, don’t work for free. Infrastructure isn’t maintained without money. It comes from somewhere.

He meant the total cost to the patient is zero. We pay for this via a regular yearly Medicare levy (if you don’t have private health care) and via our taxes. As Australians, we are fine with this.

Re: Hospitals lift curtain on prices, reveals giant swings for hips, knees and more

#215

Post by flemhans »

thesimon wrote: post #89
davidw wrote: post #29

When I lived in Italy, I once went with private care for a thing I wanted taken care of same day. I called, and they told me all the prices. I think I paid something like 120 euros out of pocket for a chest X-ray and consultation with an ENT specialist. The US health care system is so screwed up.

Same goes for Germany. The prices for doctors are fixed, so you can kinda look up how much a treatment would cost.

I remember people in Germany being upset that you have to pay €10 for a consultation.

Re: Hospitals lift curtain on prices, reveals giant swings for hips, knees and more

#216

Post by tim333 »

bane wrote: post #125

The U.S. healthcare system cannot be fixed. Period. Full-stop. The only solution is to nuke it from orbit, pave it over, and start again. It's very easy to point the finger at the conservative party as the one who's screwed it all up, but the other parties are not really putting forward models for successful healthcare systems. If one were to sit down and try to create the most absurd approach to healthcare that guar…

The medical part of the healthcare system - doctors, hospitals, the machines that go ping[0] - seem ok. It's the financial side - insurance billing and so on that needs nuking.

Talking about bombing stuff Wikipedia has:

>Charles Webster, official historian of the NHS, wrote in 2002 that "the Luftwaffe achieved in months what had defeated politicians and planners for at least two decades."

[0] https://youtu.be/arCITMfxvEc

Re: Hospitals lift curtain on prices, reveals giant swings for hips, knees and more

#217

Post by flemhans »

flemhans wrote: post #215
thesimon wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same goes for Germany. The prices for doctors are fixed, so you can kinda look up how much a treatment would cost.

I remember people in Germany being upset that you have to pay €10 for a consultation.

Oh and I also remember that the hospital billed my travel insurance €4 for an X-Ray :)

Re: Hospitals lift curtain on prices, reveals giant swings for hips, knees and more

#218

Post by Tarsul »

ShroudedNight wrote: post #209
jollofricepeas wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Politicians are often not great especially Teddy Roosevelt - a war-mongering, braggard focused on making a name for the himself and furthering the ‘forward race’. Change if it comes at all will come by... 1. a populist demagogue with unchecked power 2. Or when the market wills it more than likely via technological disruption of some kind Things must get worse before they get better as with all major advancements in h…

These are not the only ways society changes for the better. Every once in a while you get someone like Tommy Douglas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Douglas

wow, great guy. For those not clicking: responsible for single-payer health care in Saskatchewan (60s); voted greatest Canadian 20 years after his death. And Kiefer Sutherland is his grandson, yeah ;)

Re: Hospitals lift curtain on prices, reveals giant swings for hips, knees and more

#219

Post by Black101 »

jjeaff wrote: post #159
Black101 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The US healthcare system is just a completely broken mess. That's why I got hospitalization-only insurance as soon as Trump allowed it... Obama-care was a joke... except for the pre-existing condition clause, maybe.

There is a very valid reason that hospitalization only insurance was not allowed. The whole point of requiring everyone to get insurance is so that you don't have just the sickliest and oldest people getting insurance. Insurance is meant to spread the risk amongst everyone who pays premiums. Additionally, not having insurance for primary and non-emergency care will make it much less likely that people will even end u…

> The whole point of requiring everyone to get insurance is so that you don't have just the sickliest and oldest people getting insurance. Insurance is meant to spread the risk amongst everyone who pays premiums.

So why did it make the insurance costs skyrocket?

Re: Hospitals lift curtain on prices, reveals giant swings for hips, knees and more

#220

Post by dunefox »

flemhans wrote: post #215
thesimon wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same goes for Germany. The prices for doctors are fixed, so you can kinda look up how much a treatment would cost.

I remember people in Germany being upset that you have to pay €10 for a consultation.

Because we already pay taxes and a monthly healthcare fee for that...
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