Meanwhile in Russia: free ER services, free nationwide health care and no-franchise cheap voluntary insurance for everyone who doesn't want state medicine.
Cheap because you have to compete with rather-good and completely free for everyone.
What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills
491–500 of 592 posts
Re: What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills
#492Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm at a loss as to why the US is still dead set to have no meaningful health coverage. I got burned by this in California a decade ago. A dentist charged me $4,500 to fix a broken tooth (panic!) and fill in a cavity on a Sunday. Had I known then what it might have cost I'd have simply flown back to Europe in the next flight ($600-800 at the time) and get the same thing done for under $100-200 with a full refund from…
>I'm at a loss as to why the US is still dead set to have no meaningful health coverage. The US isn't a monolith. The majority of the population very much wants meaningful health coverage, but thanks to Supreme Court decisions like Citizens United, corporations are entitled to free political expression under the first Amendment, so they can give unlimited amounts of money to political candidates. This allows uberweal…
advertising is the biggest thing 'educating' voters, and usually it's usually something along the lines of here's why is bad, vote for me instead. News media is trash and unreliable as they too pander to advertisers or are just spewing nationally distributed talking points.
Bernie who was the most vocal about changes was taken out by Hillary, but no one batted an eye. No one really wants change to the healthcare and pharma industry as it will hurt the entire ecosystem (especially advertising $).
Re: What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills
#493Exhibit A for why "free market healthcare" is an oxymoron. I have yet to hear a coherent explanation for how anyone can reasonably expect for price discovery to even pretend to function in a market where the consumers can't even guess the prices until after they've already purchased and frequently couldn't reasonably be expected to refuse service even if they did believe it was overpriced.
What free market?
When a person is mandated to purchase insurance that is not a free market.
When insurance companies have monopolies in an entire state and it’s illegal to purchase insurance from another state, that is not a free market.
When hospitals are partly state funded, tax-free organizations, that is not a free market.
When hospitals are required to treat patients regardless of their ability to pay, that is not a free market.
When medical bills are paid by Medicaid, that is not a free market.
Healthcare in the United States is anything but a free market. Down vote me, if it makes you feel better, but it will not change this fact.
Re: What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills
#494I was a victim of the surprise out of network bill in the Portland, OR area. I did all my research before hand: hospital in network, surgeon in network, etc. but ONE person in that operating room was not in network and SURPRISE i'm out thousands of dollars. The worst part about this is my state passed a bill to stop this prior to my surgery, but the bill's effective date was roughly 3 months later. Talk about bad tim…
I'm at a loss as to why the US is still dead set to have no meaningful health coverage. I got burned by this in California a decade ago. A dentist charged me $4,500 to fix a broken tooth (panic!) and fill in a cavity on a Sunday. Had I known then what it might have cost I'd have simply flown back to Europe in the next flight ($600-800 at the time) and get the same thing done for under $100-200 with a full refund from…
I'm at a loss as to why the US is still dead set to have no meaningful health coverage.
Because disinformation campaigns have pushed people to vote against their interests.
Re: What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills
#495Earlier quoted context omitted.
The american way is not a free market. The employer tax break on health insurance is a significant manipulation.
A constant 30% discount on employer insurance via tax breaks does not explain the ludicrous growth in hospital bills over the last 4 decades. Your vision benefits enjoy similar tax breaks, but I've yet to see an optometrist try to bill someone without benefits $800 for a vision exam, or $4,000 for a pair of glasses. Its not the tax break. It's something else.
Insurance companies benefit from all those tricks: medical care billing is too complex to understand unless you have a full time team of people to understand it. Insurance companies have this team and you don't.
Vision doesn't work that way because enough people don't have basic vision care that they won't stand for the complexity.
Re: What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills
#496Earlier quoted context omitted.
True to an extent, but in any city (100,000 or more people) there will be two hospitals and so the poor can choose which of the two to use. Note that by poor choosing only a small number need to have the practical ability (which is to say the almost middle class) to choose since a hospital will want to attract them and that ups service for everyone even thoose who couldn't reasonably get to the other hospital.
You know the hospitals in this scenario wouldn't be next door to each other, right? The extra 30 minutes of driving time it takes for me to get to my second-closest hospital could easily mean life or death.
For the person 15 minutes from either hospital there is a choice though. Trying to attract those middle people results in better services for those who are clearly closer to one hospital.
Re: What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills
#497Earlier quoted context omitted.
True to an extent, but in any city (100,000 or more people) there will be two hospitals and so the poor can choose which of the two to use. Note that by poor choosing only a small number need to have the practical ability (which is to say the almost middle class) to choose since a hospital will want to attract them and that ups service for everyone even thoose who couldn't reasonably get to the other hospital.
You rarely have this choice in practice. Plus, as the article points out, even if you chose an in-network hospital you may well be seen by an out-of-network doctor.
In a free market the incentives are different though. in-network only is a thing because hospitals don't have any incentive to ensure everyone is in network.
Re: What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills
#498Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I also come from a country like the one you described, there is a very simple fact that cannot be ignored - when my dad got cancer 8 years ago, every single one of his operations and all the drugs(including incredibly expensive Glivec) were 100% free. He was even reimbursed for the cost of travelling to the hospital for his monthly check-up. If he had the same disease in US, he would die much earlier than he di…
You have gone from a hypothetical to concluding that people in the US die because they can't afford cancer drugs. If your dad was over 65, he would be on Medicare. If he was younger than 65 and impoverished (income between 0 - ~150% of poverty level) he would be on Medicaid or another state plan for low income people. If he's above 150% of poverty level he probably has health insurance available at work or thru ACA.…
It's entirely possible to have health coverage and still be financially ruined by a health emergency due to deductibles and pre-existing condition loopholes.
Re: What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills
#499The idea suggests itself that the problems of the US healthcare system are closely tied to unrestrained capitalism, includings its influence on/over US politics.
Re: What I learned from reading a thousand emergency room bills
#500Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you saying that the richest country in the world can't accomplish something that already exists in plain view in some of the poorest countries in the world?
You really should get the facts on how those systems actually operate. I'm currently living in an european country that has a national health service that supposedly ticks all the socialist talking points, including free (in theory) access to emergency care, but not only is the service largely inoperational with year-long waiting periods for surgeries, including cancer treatments, but also has a disgruntle workforce…
While I understand your point, I don't know if it could be distilled that succinctly. I have friends who have worked in European countries with universal healthcare that was sub-standard by a U.S. perspective. What I'm curious about is whether this is directly attributable to the healthcare system structure or if it's more causally related to other factors like GDP, access to a trained workforce, or basic infrastructure. Meaning, if we look at two very similar countries that happen to have different healthcare systems would the same effect you outlined still hold?