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Medical equipment pricing is completely broken when a sling costs $200

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311–320 of 370 posts

Re: Medical equipment pricing is completely broken when a sling costs $200

#311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why aren’t US citizens queuing up to emigrate? At this stage, it seems like the US is the “land of the free”, whereby “freedom” is defined as the ability to freely exploit everyone.

Seriously thinking about it. I am also a British citizen, so I'm at least waiting to see how this whole Brexit thing shakes out.

If you're considering somewhere in the EU other than Britain or Ireland, you should probably aim to be registered as resident before 31 October.

Re: Medical equipment pricing is completely broken when a sling costs $200

#312
post #309

As a German, this whole thread reads entirely bizarre. The US health system is the blind spot of the nation. The kind of fuckery you people have to endure every day and the kind of thought processes it requires, is astonishing. As a German, you don’t have to spend any brain cycles on health insurance or medical costs. If you’re self-employed, you maybe need to think about getting private insurance. Besides that: heal…

Same goes for education, I remember the awkward silence when I told to a NY girl that tuition fees for public college in France was around 500eur/year. Of course taxes are different.

Re: Medical equipment pricing is completely broken when a sling costs $200

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What system do you want?

I would start by making all drugs legal without a prescription except in the rare case of a systemic risk. Antibiotics and super-bugs are one example of systemic risk. Grandma's heart medication, or Suzie's asthma inhaler are not. And of course you should be able to purchase those drugs from countries we generally would trust to create safe products: Canada, UK, France, Spain, Germany, etc. Second, I would require th…

That's a pretty good list.

I'd like to understand why healthcare doesn't bill using time & materials plus markup. All current pricing seems little more than make believe.

I also don't understand why different people are billed different prices. I get that different providers will likely (hopefully) have different billing rates. But isn't billing different prices for the exact same thing illegal?

Re: Medical equipment pricing is completely broken when a sling costs $200

#316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can (eventually) garnish your wages. I wonder at what point they do that.

Only if they sell the debt to a creditor (hospitals and doctors can’t garnish wages) sue you, win, and pursue the judgement. And then they can only take from your disposable income (after rent, food, other bills, etc.) And you can wipe out all of it by filing bankruptcy.

I have seen nothing about this - and know folks that were sued by the hospitals. It has been some years, mind you.

Is it possible that they cannot garnish wages in your state? Where are you getting your information?

Re: Medical equipment pricing is completely broken when a sling costs $200

#317
post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like people should take some time off work and fly to Thailand for treatment. Any reason why there isn't more medical tourism? They do this in the UK for getting dental treatment in Eastern Europe where fillings can cost €20 each.

Well, one reason people don't become medical tourists are concerns about quality. Americans in particular are still convinced, despite ample evidence to the contrary, that our medical system is the highest quality in the world - and that this justifies the costs. I believe this is false. Healthcare quality is basically the same in all first-world countries, the only difference is cost structure. (My wife had a c-sect…

> Healthcare quality is basically the same in all first-world countries

While this statement is correct, my understanding is that there are still small quality differences, and the US is in fact the word leader in quality. Thinking about it, this also makes sense – if you are willing to pay extreme amounts to doctors, you should also see at least some improvements in quality.

But we are talking something like <1% better quality for +100% the cost, so this is clearly not worth it. But if I was a billionaire with a difficult disease, I would definitely at least consider going to the US for treatment.

Re: Medical equipment pricing is completely broken when a sling costs $200

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't understand why this isn't prosecuted. Simply examine the way the issue was presented by frontrunners in the supposedly liberal party of the United States on the debate stage yesterday. Two candidates call for true universal coverage, a few call for a public option but brand it as universal coverage to confuse viewers, and several (with moderator and broadcast sponsor support) outright mislead by stating that…

Three candidates actually. (Bernie, Warren, and Yang.) ... Loss aversion is a powerful emotion with destructive effects on our politics. Once enough people have something to lose from a change, change becomes extremely hard, even if the overall net effect would be positive. Not only does this preserve bad policies, it turns some into a one-way ratchet--where it's easy to make things worse and very hard to make them b…

They could be strung up as combined they do not have enough marketing power as a strong populist political party. Unfortunately, as we've seen, the closest USA has for this is Trump, who is playing the Republican playbook.

Both parties are economically right wing. Third party is easily squished by tribalism and system being unbalanced.

Re: Medical equipment pricing is completely broken when a sling costs $200

#319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I don't understand why this isn't prosecuted. Simply examine the way the issue was presented by frontrunners in the supposedly liberal party of the United States on the debate stage yesterday. Two candidates call for true universal coverage, a few call for a public option but brand it as universal coverage to confuse viewers, and several (with moderator and broadcast sponsor support) outright mislead by stating that…

I strongly support the Warren/Sanders universal healthcare plan, but in terms of optics, I don't actually see what the point is to making “duplicate coverage” private insurance illegal. It invites FUD and provides a convenient bogeyman while being entirely irrelevant in practical terms. If the government is providing comprehensive free healthcare to all, why would anyone need duplicate private health insurance? There…

It won't die, as private extra healthcare helps reduce queues, so a small amount thereof makes public services more available.

But they would never be able to outcompete it.

Re: Medical equipment pricing is completely broken when a sling costs $200

#320
post #4

I just got an itemized bill today for a minor fall I took a couple months back.. On top of the nearly $6k in other charges from the hospital, they charged $531 for one dab of superglue or "liquid stitches" on my forehead for something that would have healed by itself. One of my friends died two years ago from pneumonia. He didn't go to the hospital when symptoms first started because he was afraid of the bills that w…

For whatever reason, the cost issue is completely missing from the dem primary debates on healthcare. Everything so far has been focused on health insurance coverage, and the candidates are really just debating what is the best way to cover more people. A world where 100% of Americans are covered under the existing healthcare system is still a disaster because everything still costs so much between premiums, deductib…

Instead of MAGA maybe Make American Health Cheap?
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