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I analyzed hospital price lists so you didn't have to

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Re: I analyzed hospital price lists so you didn't have to

#301

Post by this_is_not_you »

lr1970 wrote: post #289

This study uses polars [0][1] -- a new Data Science library written in Rust (core) with bindings to Python and Javascript. Perfect replacement for pandas. Polars' claims to fame are speed (faster than pretty much anything out there [2][3]), low memory pressure (very visible when comparing to pandas) and consistent API across Rust, Python, JS. [0] https://www.pola.rs/ [1] https://github.com/pola-rs/polars [2] https://…

Thanks! I had not heard of it before. As a Python pandas user I have to say this look really promising. The speed claims are obviously great but what really stood out to me is the syntax. Reminds of the the dplyr syntax which I enjoyed a lot when I was still using R.

Re: I analyzed hospital price lists so you didn't have to

#302

Post by cto_of_antifa »

lowercased wrote: post #288
jamra wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was in the physical therapy space for over 15 years. The penny pinching that comes from healthcare giants towards their software vendors are dreadful. It prevents any serious software engineering from happening. One customer billed over a billion dollars in a year to Medicare through our software and paid us $1M that year. I'm still not certain that we didn't take a loss to take that client. Passing around financia…

> Passing around financial data on SFTP drops is something that irked me. I see this a moderate amount in fintech, or perhaps at least older fintech? Had a colleague tell me about a new financial info provider he was supposed to connect with for data. "Oh this one will be easy" he was told. "They use oauth". OK... well... you oauth in, then you hit an endpoint that triggers a data build which then puts your data file…

No post body was provided.

Re: I analyzed hospital price lists so you didn't have to

#303

Post by bawana »

The fundamental problem is that we have chosen to use a free market mechanism for a condition that is not voluntarily acquired. No one chooses to get sick. Why then should we provide choice for its solution?

Can you imagine the same solution for our police? Military? Emergency services?

Re: I analyzed hospital price lists so you didn't have to

#304

Post by ThaDood »

tomrod wrote: post #298
duffpkg wrote: post #65

Wrote Hacking Healthcare for O'Reilly, created ClearHealth/HealthCloud open source EMR, managed health systems for 15+ years, blah, blah, blah. It is very good there is are the transparency regulations. It is worth briefly explaining some of the reasons why many facitilities are having a hard time complying. There are some bad actors, absolutely true. However "Hanlons Razor" -- never attribute to malice that which is…

I don't think vendor lock-in is a sufficient explanation here, respectfully. I feel this is why efforts like FHIR are very important, though certainly scratching the surface.

As someone who works for an HIE and in the interoperability space, I feel like we have been talking about FHIR for the last decade. Hopefully it hits critical mass soon but I doubt it.

Re: I analyzed hospital price lists so you didn't have to

#306

Post by AdamN »

Having recently moved to Germany from Seattle ... it really is nice to not have to worry about this stuff. This is especially true since I have leukemia and take medicine daily. At some point I'll have a big frustration with the German healthcare system I'm sure, but it hasn't happened yet.

Re: I analyzed hospital price lists so you didn't have to

#307

Post by CarbonCycles »

Someone1234 wrote: post #13

When High Deductible Insurance was introduced the supposed concept was to "give employees a stake in their costs, and therefore lower them for both employer and employee." However, even today doing so is very challenging, and before laws like this it was essentially impossible. There's no way to shop around American healthcare, with the system itself working against you at every turn (e.g. doctors prescribing named b…

Me and my colleagues (actuaries by training) ran some very interesting what-if scenarios based on our companies insurance packages, and every single scenario indicated that going with the highest deductible (or HSA) was more cost effective for the employee...the employer (with the insurance companies) had stacked the deductibles and cost structure to shift the risk from the company to the employee.

And the medical providers (not the insurance company) will always have discounts on their procedures...just have to ask for them. Makes one wonder how steep the mark-ups are.

Re: I analyzed hospital price lists so you didn't have to

#308

Post by dnndev »

el_jay wrote: post #238
duffpkg wrote: post #65

Wrote Hacking Healthcare for O'Reilly, created ClearHealth/HealthCloud open source EMR, managed health systems for 15+ years, blah, blah, blah. It is very good there is are the transparency regulations. It is worth briefly explaining some of the reasons why many facitilities are having a hard time complying. There are some bad actors, absolutely true. However "Hanlons Razor" -- never attribute to malice that which is…

Interesting, thank you. One remark: > Modernization is hard, time consuming and very expensive. These regulations are a good driver for all that, but it takes time. Having been in some of these boardrooms there is not typically a cartel of evil executives figuring out how to screw patients. A lot of the time it is a group of relatively normal people trying to hold up a technological and business process house of card…

If the incentive is not more money in most cases then it won’t work.

And those who generously give may not oversee how money is spent and likely squandered to a certain degree.

Takes an incredibly self sacrificing individual to risk it all, which is what this requires.

Re: I analyzed hospital price lists so you didn't have to

#309

Post by coredog64 »

wefarrell wrote: post #295
duffpkg wrote: post #65

Wrote Hacking Healthcare for O'Reilly, created ClearHealth/HealthCloud open source EMR, managed health systems for 15+ years, blah, blah, blah. It is very good there is are the transparency regulations. It is worth briefly explaining some of the reasons why many facitilities are having a hard time complying. There are some bad actors, absolutely true. However "Hanlons Razor" -- never attribute to malice that which is…

"There are some bad actors, absolutely true. However 'Hanlons Razor' -- never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity -- definitely applies." In healthcare especially incompetence opens the door for bad actors to exploit weaknesses in the system which amount to huge amounts of money being wasted. Medical fraud, for example, is one of the most sophisticated organized criminal activities in…

$1000/month insulin is not 100 years old. Your comment is like complaining that because penicillin was isolated in 1928, nobody should have a patent on any antibiotic.

Humalog insulin was patented in the 90s, and IIRC, is what Walmart sells for $25/vial. Novo Nordisk (among others) continually improves the product. Those improved products are where you see the $1k/month prices.

Re: I analyzed hospital price lists so you didn't have to

#310

Post by lotsofpulp »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #217
sl-dolt wrote: post #164

I'm as surprised as anyone to see this #1 on HN. Glad y'all like it. AMA. Feedback, criticism, comments, directions to go, whatever.

I wanted to see how different the price for the knee replacement would be at different hospitals.

You can simply ask the hospital to give you good faith estimates:

https://www.cms.gov/nosurprises/consumers/understanding-cost...

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