31–40 of 107 posts
I wonder, since we strangely expect employers to provide healthcare insurance in the US, what if employers just decided to provided actual healthcare. Imagine taking all of the health premiums Google pays for its employees, and instead of feeding it in to a broken system, you build a world class health facility in Mountain View that's free to employees.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"if you are lucky enough to have insurance." This is one of the many sad points about the health system. Luck should have absolutely NO relation to whether you can afford reasonable health care. Reasonable health care should be available to Joe Blow who is earning minimum wage at your local city council and to Mr. Burns who is earning 20x more than Joe Blow.
Great news, they solved this in a very profitable way. In a few years it will literally be a crime to not have insurance. So cannot afford it? Not their problem - YOUR problem. Yay 'murica.
I wonder, since we strangely expect employers to provide healthcare insurance in the US, what if employers just decided to provided actual healthcare. Imagine taking all of the health premiums Google pays for its employees, and instead of feeding it in to a broken system, you build a world class health facility in Mountain View that's free to employees.
I wonder, since we strangely expect employers to provide healthcare insurance in the US, what if employers just decided to provided actual healthcare. Imagine taking all of the health premiums Google pays for its employees, and instead of feeding it in to a broken system, you build a world class health facility in Mountain View that's free to employees.
Always tell them you are paying in cash. Take bill home and sumbit to insurance if you are lucky enough to have insurance. You just saved the system at least 75% of the cost.
Hospitals charge uninsured people a ridiculous amount, then mark it down anywhere from 50-98% (Yes, I had a bill that was adjusted 98%) based on negotiations with insurance companies.
Uninsured people get hit with the full, absurd inflated costs as bills. They then have the privilege of begging the hospital for a markdown or a payment plan (turned down completely in my case as an unemployed graduate student because I couldn't afford my own place and lived with parents).
The bills don't show up for anywhere from three weeks to three months, and there is no indication of what is owed until they end; Nobody's able to tell you on command what things cost before 'coding' things at their leisure. One hospital visit that does any nontrivial diagnostic work may incur dozens of separately billed "services" running through different providers and individual doctors. That begging the hospital for a markdown only applies to them, three-quarters of the others won't accept anything short of the full amount.
I thought this system was a bad compromise, but then I got sick. The system is absolutely ridiculous, the victim is given an open-ended debt("If we think of anything else you owe us we'll call you", & "No, we can't give you an itemized bill for 'services'") in dozens of segments with little room for argument or inspection, and threatened monthly with destruction of his financial livelihood.
Don't support single payer healthcare? Try a major acute illness on for size and see if your opinions change. This system of "insurance", whatever it was supposed to solve, is utterly broken unless you happen to be healthy.
PS: My state is apparently recognized as one of the best in the nation on this topic, I can only imagine what it's like in North Dakota. A lot of people's lives have been ruined by a medical system that makes it downright impossible for the average person to tolerate getting sick.
PPS: I think of hospitals as somewhat predatorial now because this will fall worst on an honest, ignorant, unemployed person who attempts to pay his debts - the way one is advised by financial experts to deal with it is to either declare bankruptcy, or make small monthly payments, an option which appears nowhere on your bills (which demand payment immediately), and which the hospital will not either volunteer or agree to when requested. Token payments above some undefined percentage of the debt will prevent them from sending the bill to the collections agency. So if you know this, a major illness might be roughly equivalent to an unexpected student loan, but with the stress of destroying one's health and future health insurance. If you don't, or if you acquire a chronic illness which requires extended care, you acquire a permanent black cloud raining down acid on your financial future.
"a health system that can set prices with impunity because consumers rarely see them — and rarely shop for discounts"
Kind of defeats the whole "free market" thing, doesn't it?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Kind of defeats the whole "free market" thing, doesn't it?
It isn't really a free market though, it is a fixed market. If it was true free market it would be individual to service, that is why prices are all over the place. We just need to return to individual health care plans, paid for by employees individually (or give them cash health benefits). If your employer paid your auto insurance we'd have the same problem. Not sure how you fix it, maybe by temporarily making it i…
8000, 38000, both insanely expensive. I haven't seen a single sane price in the whole article.
There's certainly ways to save money on the lowest price, but the spread is far more interesting - given that you should get a solid treatment in each of the hospitals, why does one manage to offer you a fifth of the highest price?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most private health insurance in the US is provided by employers. Thus, the people paying for the services are not the patients but insurance companies, and the insurance companies are selected by employers not the patients.
But that says nothing about why insurance companies are not pushing prices down. They get paid by employers, but they'd make more profit if the health care they buy is cheaper. Since I regularly hear that prices are cheaper if you negotiate with the doctors it seems that insurance companies are not doing that negotiation. So, given that they appear to be losing out on some profit, why? Why aren't they pushing the cos…
Insurance companies figure out what stuff should actually cost, then enter into contracts with providers that says "Hey I know you're still making a decent profit if I only pay you $100 instead of $150, so take $100 and you'll make it up on volume when you become one of my preferred providers."