Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

medtechdive.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 283 posts

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

#231

Post by leetcrew »

bane wrote: post #134
zie wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Senators and congresspeople get their own very high quality insurance. They have no incentive to fix it, their own health care is world-class.

That's too easy an answer. They get basically the same options for health insurance as other federal employees. And that insurance is not materially different from the insurance you'd get from any other major employer.

I don't think that's quite true. BCBS FEP offers some fantastic plans that would be pretty hard to match at a private employer.

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

#232

Post by leetcrew »

Gravityloss wrote: post #205
throw123123123 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kaiser is popular and 'a' model of care, but do note that it is extremely limited in coverage and is one of the most draconian in respect to providers. They hire people right out of medschool with the offer to pay their entire student debt if they stay with them for 8 years. They have massive burn out.

Hmm is that kind of a contract legal? What happens if a person leaves after four years?

why wouldn't it be? if you leave early, you're no worse off than you were when you graduated med school. I guess you could be worse off if you wouldn't have gone to med school in the first place if the offer wasn't on the table...

I'd guess if you leave early you have to pay off your own debt, possibly prorated by years on the job.

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

#233

Post by toomuchtodo »

aantix wrote: post #224
hippira wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously he and his mother has already paid for in taxes, zero cost here is in the sense that the cost is not going to eat into their current savings. While in the US you paid taxes and can still potentially go bankrupt if you have major diseases.

But their current savings is lower because of their higher taxes.

50% of bankruptcies in the US are medical cost related, so the whole “you can save more in the US with lower taxes” argument is moot. You’re doing the same as driving without car insurance; it works right up until the crash site.

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

#234

Post by randyrand »

axlee wrote: post #9

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

The developing world often has a rather free market, and the prices are just that, cheap.

In the US, it’s the most regulated service we offer.

1. the supply and instruction of doctors are regulated

2. the supply of hospitals are regulated (often by other hospitals!)

3. service for insurance is regulated

4. pharmaceuticals are regulated

5. physical medical tools are regulated

6. hospital facilities are regulated

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

#235

Post by jrmg »

tomrod wrote: post #57
banana_giraffe wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have good insurance through a major company. My SO tripped, and hit their head on a curb on a busy road. I wasn't there, but by happenstance an EMT was there, witnessed the event, and came to offer aid. The EMT was concerned enough my SO ended up going to the hospital. Several scans, and a few hours later, my SO was discharged. I then got to spend something like 30 hours on the phone over the course of a couple of…

Always ask for the billing and procedure codes, also known as DGN, ICD10, and CPT/HPCPS Medical transcribing has a high error rate.

Ask who? When?

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

#236

Post by yhoneycomb »

kelnos wrote: post #208
torgian wrote: post #105

Meanwhile in developing countries, health care is hassle-free and low cost. I spent 24usd for an invasive procedure and meds in Taiwan. I’m honestly happy I left the States years ago because I’d probably be in debt at this point.

Taiwan isn't a developing country.

Yea wtf lol

Honestly, by many measures Taiwan is more advanced than the US.

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

#237

Post by Balgair »

narrator wrote: post #84

Kaiser is the only non-broken part of the U.S healthcare system. They have never sent me a bill for a surprise out of network anything. Out of network doctors don't work there. All doctors are on salary. You get one bill from one company. No wonder they have been growing like crazy in California.

I agree, Kaiser is very very good for the US. However, they tend to be more of a 'standard' care kind of thing. Like, broken arms, colds, pregnancy, all good under Kaiser. But harder things like cancer, ALS, Parkinson's, it's a lot tougher for them to get you the right treatment. This, unfortunately, I know about as people close to me had to leave Kaiser to get dealt with.

That said, Kaiser is still my gold standard for the US.

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

#238

Post by redler »

__blockcipher__ wrote: post #194
uoaei wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying for healthcare via taxes would look very, very similar to how it is now. Because that's how insurance works: you are paying into a pool now to get access to help later. I can't tell if you're being sarcastically libertarian or deliberately antagonistic.

I’m surprised you couldn’t tell because my reading is their point was quite clearly genuine and not at all sarcastic. They were just expressing the notion that while the acute personal cost is zero the actual cost is still borne. They didn’t make the point in a very nuanced way but any system that divorces the cost from the person receiving the treatment hides information by suppressing the natural price discovery me…

Under such a system, if your choice is not to have insurance, what should happen if you step in a hole and shatter your ankle in a way that requires complex surgery to repair? And if the response is to simply pay the cost out of pocket, what if that "choice" not to have insurance was made because you're working at a minimum wage job?

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

#239

Post by redler »

aantix wrote: post #224
hippira wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously he and his mother has already paid for in taxes, zero cost here is in the sense that the cost is not going to eat into their current savings. While in the US you paid taxes and can still potentially go bankrupt if you have major diseases.

But their current savings is lower because of their higher taxes.

Under the US system, everyone's savings is also lower -- because of extremely high insurance premiums, co-pays, coinsurance, deductibles, high out-of-pocket payment maximums, uncovered care, predatory billing complexity designed to minimize "medical loss", lesser job mobility due to linkage of employment with the ability to get medical care, far higher drug prices, and so forth. It's a system full of holes into which almost anyone without wealth can fall -- even people with good insurance.

If you simplify and subtract the need for intermediaries to extract profit from this kind of system, remove all risk of anyone in the country being personally financially destroyed by their health care needs, remove from US businesses the obligation to manage and pay for their share of their employee health benefits, and distribute the resulting costs across the entire population, would you argue that would somehow cost more? That the resulting "higher taxes" would exceed the lowering of all the systemic, business, and personal costs and risk above?

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

#240

Post by leetcrew »

ryanbrunner wrote: post #221
narrator wrote: post #84

Kaiser is the only non-broken part of the U.S healthcare system. They have never sent me a bill for a surprise out of network anything. Out of network doctors don't work there. All doctors are on salary. You get one bill from one company. No wonder they have been growing like crazy in California.

From the perspective of most of the world, having to limit yourselves to medical care that's provided by a particular company seems very broken. (unless I'm misunderstanding how Kaiser works). I can just go to whatever walk-in clinic, urgent care provider or emergency room I need, depending on the severity and get treatment (I do try to go to my GP if possible, but I have many options if that's not practical for some…

> From the perspective of most of the world, having to limit yourselves to medical care that's provided by a particular company seems very broken.

from the perspective of some people in the US, this is exactly what socialized medicine looks like, except you can't change the company.

Post reply on HN