371–380 of 390 posts
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by my initialing a form we had, their balance due us was 0 That is very nice of you. I hope others like you in positions of power do the same!
After thinking about this, I realized he probably didn't do the job for free. Even though "anesthesia" is broken out as a line item on the bill from the hospital, it's not what the anesthesiologist gets paid. It's probably not a passed-through charge like it appears to be.
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That sounds like an awesome idea if you completely ignore all the important things about healthcare differences across countries. In fact, it sounds like a great way to make things worse!
https://www.pgpf.org/chart-archive/0011_health-outcomes https://www.newsweek.com/united-states-health-care-rated-wor... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_quality_o... Um.
“Tweaking” the system is how the US system got so messed up in the first place. Anyone who suggests “just one simple tweak should fix things” is an idiot.
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Not sure if you are joking but the hospitals are paid by the government for the provided services (via tax money). Obviously a life long cancer treatment will cost much more than 30 USD.
If the government has a final say, then it has to restrict supply to keep costs down. It cant say yes to everything.
Anyone can go to a doctor to get an appropriate level of treatment. If you want more than that, to the degree that you want to waste your own money, then of course you can do that by paying for it out of your own pocket.
It's funny that we are having this discussion. This is a solved problem in large parts or the world and the only reason it's an issue in the US is due to people being crazy.
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The further toward the poles you go, the more mental healthcare is needed, so it makes sense they would have the experience and infrastructure! (Completely serious.)
This isn't necessarily the case with my situation. There was only one hospital for where I lived in Marquette, Michigan. My mental healthcare was pertaining to gender dysphoria and not depression which I think you're associating with longer winters. Anyway place I grew up was filled with religious nuts to make things short. They forcibly prescribed me with antipsychotics while ignoring my right & modern medical appro…
It’s no different in Canada - small towns don’t offer as good of care particularly when it’s something that’s not common.
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> Where I live you know the cost before you go to the doctor since you will only pay a symbolic sum of 30 USD even if the visit ends up with something like a life long cancer treatment. If you need medicine you will pay at most 120 USD per year regardless of the costs. Then the problem is you have no pricing mechanism for determining how much the provider should actually be paid. If you offer less than what people va…
> I've never understood why people have this idea about healthcare but not even more immediate necessities like food and housing. Hmm but I have the same view for food and housing. Where I live if your mother doesn't have allow money to buy proper food the government will contribute (both for food and housing).
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> It's a total mess and hopelessly complex for the average consumer. Sounds like something the people on this forum can help improve.
Sounds like something the people on this forum can help improve. A lot of the problems average consumers face are political/social and not technical (technical problems associated with these issues were solved decades ago). For example, it takes 10 days for my bank to send funds from U.S to my home country. Why 10 days? I have no idea. What I do know is 10 days is extremely unreasonable at the end of 2018. I filled a…
I guess there is political pressure to make the process as annoying as possible, and not just from tax services corporations.
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Had new insurance and a sore shoulder. Was billed ~$1,400 for a physical therapist to examine it ("evaluation"). No treatment. Very little covered by insurance. The next day had a chiropractor treat it and shoulder was fine. $25 with coupon. Funny part is, as it was new insurance, I spent over 30 minutes with insurance rep in advance on phone going over options and trying to get an idea of likely costs. When I had a…
So you have insurance but it doesn't cover stuff when you are actually ill? Does your insurance policy actually spell stuff out so that you can predict what will or won't be covered? Note: I'm from the UK and find the stories about US healthcare insurance grimly fascinating....
https://www.thebalance.com/medical-bankruptcy-statistics-415...
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> I've never understood why people have this idea about healthcare but not even more immediate necessities like food and housing. Hmm but I have the same view for food and housing. Where I live if your mother doesn't have allow money to buy proper food the government will contribute (both for food and housing).
The difference is that the government doesn't take over all farms, restaurants and grocery stores and require you to get your food from them even for everyone who can afford it themselves.
So what do you mean?
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> It's a total mess and hopelessly complex for the average consumer. Sounds like something the people on this forum can help improve.
It's not a technological problem but a political one: the obfuscatory pricing is deliberate. Maybe you could have "fighting hospital billing as a service", but that's definitely going to need a chunk of human labour on top of whatever AI assistance you apply.
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Perfect competition? There is no such thing in practice. Also potentially a way to outsource this to a group with better knowledge. Dentistry is a good example of competitive service, eye care is as well. And negotiation is normal. You're moving the goal posts in the right direction, but to the edge.
Plenty of things are pretty close to perfect competition Grocery stores, sandwich shops, coffee houses, clothing stores, coin laundromats, circuit design, postal carriers, kitchen utensils and serving equipment, rental cars, housekeeping things like brooms and dustpans, bouquets and flowers, nuts bolts and fasteners, airlines... Essentially anything where the brands are fairly indistinguishable and you have a hard ti…