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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

#251

Post by zo1 »

rscho wrote: post #227
zo1 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen first hand the opposite in my country, where free market private health care is working almost near perfection. All it takes is minimal regulation and then watching the healthy patient incentives aligning with the profit motive without government meddling. And I've been watching in real time as the government is actively blocking and preventing this same functioning private healthcare system from acquiring…

So you're telling me that your private sector wants to vaccinate everyone for free? Sure, yeah! So, call me Red but I feel something between "free for everyone" and "private sector" doesn't align...

Free as in out of our collective insurance pool, yeah. So free just like in a country with socialized medicine ;)

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

#252

Post by cptskippy »

jjoonathan wrote: post #97
cptskippy wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one argues that the California or Texas power grids were geared to be unreliable and fail, but they were deliberately engineered over the years in specific ways for specific reasons. Our medical system is no different. Insurers developed byzantine claims departments and custom plans as a way to make medical coding complicated and error prone for the purpose of denying claims due to error. They setup private panels…

There are three heads to this beast: hospitals, insurance companies, and drug companies. Each swears it is innocent and points to the other two and calls them the problem, but they are all guilty. You've covered the evil tactics of insurers, but providers absolutely engage in intentional opaqueness, overbilling, and as much screwball behavior as the market will bear. No, the insurance company did not force them to ch…

Over billing is a result of the complexity of the system. Care providers have to hire full-time staff trained to deal with insurance and file claims. Insurers negotiate rates with care providers that put them in a position of having no customers or ones they're paid poorly for. They have responded by playing games with billing and insurance to make ends meet.

Is it fair or honest? No but if they suddenly became fair and honest it would solve nothing because they're a symptom of the problem, not a source.

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

#253

Post by Cederfjard »

DanBC wrote: post #247
MystK wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean links are everywhere if you search... https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/484301-22... https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2020/01/416416/single-payer-system... https://www.courthousenews.com/study-universal-health-care-i... https://pnhp.org/news/implementing-a-universal-healthcare-sy...

None of these links say what you're claiming they say. Your courthouse link: > “For me, the important lesson is that single payer can re-direct huge resources – about $700 billion per year in the U.S. – from insurance paperwork and excessive drug prices to clinical care. In other words, with a simplified payment system, we can afford to insure everyone and with high quality insurance – broad benefits, minimal cost-sh…

Yes, MystK, if these are the texts you say support your thesis, then I think I might not understand what you mean by the statement that ”there are definitely people who think universal healthcare will cost nothing”.

If what you mean is that there are people who think that the costs could be less under such a system, and thus that a change would end up ”costing nothing” as contrasted with ”costs going up compared to the current system” - then yeah I agree, there are people who believe that, and I’d say they are right in doing so. I’d also say that the way you’ve chosen to express that is misleading to say the least.

I assume you don’t believe that these people think that it’s literally free, that paying workers, buying supplies, and building and maintaining facilities and so on cost literally nothing.

But if it’s neither of these two concepts that you’re referring to, then I honestly have no clue what you’re trying to say.

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

#254

Post by throw123123123 »

joshspankit wrote: post #226
throw123123123 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same problem in non-capitalist systems that decide this by selecting what is covered or not.

Maybe capitalism is too specific here. I mean that any system that has money or power as it’s underlying motivation probably cannot reach the kind of level that is possible since there will be people who are gaming and manipulating it to take extra for themselves. My actual point is that we (human beings) have the technology, the knowledge, and the capacity for compassion required to live beautifully vibrant lives fr…

Im not sure your last statement is true or makes sense. Healthcare provision is not solar power bogged down by a specific technological or policy barrier. It's a complex service industry that requires a lot of human touch as well the capacity for innovation has no bounds on cost.

Nobody wants to spend 100% of their income on healthcare, which means saying no has to become a habit.

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

#255

Post by jollofricepeas »

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

So what you’re saying is that we need more Baptist preachers in politics? ;)

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

#256

Post by Gravityloss »

leetcrew wrote: post #232
Gravityloss wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To me it seems like such a long period of time that it starts infringing on the employee's freedom.

What's the limit? Can you sign somebody up for 50 years of labor?

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

#257

Post by joshspankit »

throw123123123 wrote: post #254
joshspankit wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe capitalism is too specific here. I mean that any system that has money or power as it’s underlying motivation probably cannot reach the kind of level that is possible since there will be people who are gaming and manipulating it to take extra for themselves. My actual point is that we (human beings) have the technology, the knowledge, and the capacity for compassion required to live beautifully vibrant lives fr…

Im not sure your last statement is true or makes sense. Healthcare provision is not solar power bogged down by a specific technological or policy barrier. It's a complex service industry that requires a lot of human touch as well the capacity for innovation has no bounds on cost. Nobody wants to spend 100% of their income on healthcare, which means saying no has to become a habit.

I may not have communicated my point effectively.

I'm not talking about Healthcare provision, or the complexity of the current service industry (the whole industrial complex around healthcare is

I'm saying: pretend we could sweep everything 'off the table' and start over. Not just the industries and the political systems, not just fiscal structures, not just the concept of money itself, but the mindsets of every human being.

And let me be clear: I do not think that this is realistically possible in any sort of reasonable time frame (I'm not even going to argue that it's possible at all).

But, now that we've hypothetically swept everything off the table, my point is that we have the building blocks to build a society where the majority of people are effortlessly healthy.

With a clean starting point, there's no reason to build in a way that companies gain by keeping people sick.

We as a planet know how to be healthy.

We as a planet know how to keep the environment healthy.

We as a planet know how to be emotionally, physically, and spiritually vibrant.

We as a planet know how to treat many diseases cheaply and effectively. (Not all. There's definitely still a need for medical R&D so don't @ me on that)

Yes, we could argue all day about how these ideas are not profitable or realistic or 'how things are done' in our current societies, but none of those arguments matter against the fact that we have more varied understanding and capabilities now than we ever have in the past.

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

#258

Post by tomrod »

jrmg wrote: post #235
tomrod wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Your health insurance policy provider, as soon as you get an EOB.

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

#259

Post by refurb »

rscho wrote: post #178
refurb wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it’s not private healthcare that’s the issue, it’s the absurd layer of regulations that were developed over the past 70+ years. Typically some inefficiency was addressed with regulation that just created a new inefficiency. To give you a good example - 340b is a govt regulation that requires drug manufacturers to give a 23% discount off drugs to hospitals that treat a lot of low income patients. Great idea right?…

In my book, the problems begin as soon as the healthcare system is required to be lucrative. And don't tell me not-for-profit hospitals are not lucrative. It would be even worse without regulations. Care providers would illegally organize into cartels (which is of course already happening) and going to see the doc would then really just be like bringing your car to the garage, with all the 'niceties' that go with tha…

Yet plenty of countries have well functioning private healthcare. Singapore is a good example. Hell, even in Canada most primary care doctors run private clinics.

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

#260

Post by rscho »

refurb wrote: post #259
rscho wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my book, the problems begin as soon as the healthcare system is required to be lucrative. And don't tell me not-for-profit hospitals are not lucrative. It would be even worse without regulations. Care providers would illegally organize into cartels (which is of course already happening) and going to see the doc would then really just be like bringing your car to the garage, with all the 'niceties' that go with tha…

Yet plenty of countries have well functioning private healthcare. Singapore is a good example. Hell, even in Canada most primary care doctors run private clinics.

Small private clinics run by a small bunch or even a single practitioner have almost nothing in common with huge healthcare companies. This is precisely what I mean when I say that docs have control over their own turf but no further. Such small private structures are perfectly acceptable since they're much less toxic to the system at large. Independent practitioners will never have the lobbying weight that whole companies have, and therefore are IMO the only form of private healthcare provider that can work. Hospitals should be public.
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