The Man Who Was Treated for $17,000 Less
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The Man Who Was Treated for $17,000 Less
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Re: The Man Who Was Treated for $17,000 Less
#2For a lot of stuff, the idea of pre-negotiating price between patient and provider sounds great. I'm not sure how emergency care can work well though without some third party to help set fair pricing.
You get taken to a hospital out of your control, and they're allowed to decide what services to provide and as well as the price they're going to charge you. After the fact your only leverage to negotiate the bill down is declaring bankruptcy.
Re: The Man Who Was Treated for $17,000 Less
#3For a lot of stuff, the idea of pre-negotiating price between patient and provider sounds great. I'm not sure how emergency care can work well though without some third party to help set fair pricing. You get taken to a hospital out of your control, and they're allowed to decide what services to provide and as well as the price they're going to charge you. After the fact your only leverage to negotiate the bill down…
Here's a wild idea: emergency care should be handled by the state, and just accepted as the cost of living in a modern civilized society.
Re: The Man Who Was Treated for $17,000 Less
#4"Take the examples of Lasik eye surgery or cosmetic surgery. These services are not covered by insurance. Providers compete on the basis of quality, outcomes and price. And prices have continually dropped as quality and services have improved—unlike the rest of health care."
Sadly, most people forget this. They think that healthcare is somehow immune from the laws of economics, that it is "special."
Re: The Man Who Was Treated for $17,000 Less
#5For a lot of stuff, the idea of pre-negotiating price between patient and provider sounds great. I'm not sure how emergency care can work well though without some third party to help set fair pricing. You get taken to a hospital out of your control, and they're allowed to decide what services to provide and as well as the price they're going to charge you. After the fact your only leverage to negotiate the bill down…
> I'm not sure how emergency care can work well though without some third party to help set fair pricing.
And how much of healthcare spending does emergency care constitute? There's no reason not to drop pre-paid plans for non-emergency services.
Re: The Man Who Was Treated for $17,000 Less
#6For a lot of stuff, the idea of pre-negotiating price between patient and provider sounds great. I'm not sure how emergency care can work well though without some third party to help set fair pricing. You get taken to a hospital out of your control, and they're allowed to decide what services to provide and as well as the price they're going to charge you. After the fact your only leverage to negotiate the bill down…
Here's a wild idea: emergency care should be handled by the state, and just accepted as the cost of living in a modern civilized society.
Here's a wild idea - it is handled by the state. (Unless you already have insurance)
So... if you don't have insurance, guess where you can go? That's right - to the emergency room, where they are legally obligated to treat you. And if you don't/can't pay, then the hospital. It is one of the costs of doing business, and if you are a county hospital, then the cost is eaten by the gov't.
Needless to say, without handling the rest of the healthcare industry, just having the state pay for emergency care won't work.
What you'll end up with is a one-way ticket toward emergency rooms packed with people there to get routine (non-emergency) care. Or, you get people that have legit emergencies caused by lack of routine care... pick your poison.
Re: The Man Who Was Treated for $17,000 Less
#7"Take the examples of Lasik eye surgery or cosmetic surgery. These services are not covered by insurance. Providers compete on the basis of quality, outcomes and price. And prices have continually dropped as quality and services have improved—unlike the rest of health care." Sadly, most people forget this. They think that healthcare is somehow immune from the laws of economics, that it is "special."
Every time I hear how much Lasik surgery has improved, I'm gladder I haven't let those damned lasers anywhere near my eyes. :-)
For the hackernews spin, this trick works for software too - I learned it at my first job, where each client had a different stack and we had to evaluate lots of enterprisey vendors: look at the improvements. The same thing that makes vendors tell you their software will make you toast and find you dates makes them unable to resist crowing about the improvements from version to version. If you're choosing between two identical-looking products, go with the one whose recent release notes have things like "Fix problems when mixing Russian and Right-to-left scripts on EBCDIC systems" rather than, "Now includes support for backups!"
Re: The Man Who Was Treated for $17,000 Less
#8In India, "health insurance" has very little impact. It is essentially for hospitalization. This is the ideal situation as per the article: let healthcare negotiate with patients.
But look at the downsides: no standardization of procedures or facilities, price gouging is common and doctors+hospitals controlling prices.
The fallacy here is that the patients can shop and bargain for care they need. It isn't so in so many situations due many distortions in free market utopia. Perhaps, someone needs to hack a new solution to insurance.
Re: The Man Who Was Treated for $17,000 Less
#9"Take the examples of Lasik eye surgery or cosmetic surgery. These services are not covered by insurance. Providers compete on the basis of quality, outcomes and price. And prices have continually dropped as quality and services have improved—unlike the rest of health care." Sadly, most people forget this. They think that healthcare is somehow immune from the laws of economics, that it is "special."
Some major insurance companies covered LASIK about 10 years ago, but have since stopped. My LASIK was paid 100% by my insurance co in 2003. I heard the logic that paying $2000 in 2003 was cheaper than paying $150-300 per year for exams, lenses & frames for 10-15 years.
Re: The Man Who Was Treated for $17,000 Less
#10For a lot of stuff, the idea of pre-negotiating price between patient and provider sounds great. I'm not sure how emergency care can work well though without some third party to help set fair pricing. You get taken to a hospital out of your control, and they're allowed to decide what services to provide and as well as the price they're going to charge you. After the fact your only leverage to negotiate the bill down…
Here's a wild idea: emergency care should be handled by the state, and just accepted as the cost of living in a modern civilized society.
Or the opposite: Have the state take care of routine preventative care (exams, age-related tests, etc), the patient would have a high-deductible policy for stuff like cancer, auto-accidents, etc. And everything else people pay on a fee-for-service basis.
Society benefits because we're paying to ensure a basic level of health for everyone and not the current system of inflated prices. The insurance industry gets to stay in business (which they wouldn't under a government run single-payer system), and patients benefit because they get to shop for a provider based on outcomes and price, for everything that isn't catastrophic.