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from the there-should-be-an-app-for-that dept.
Fountain Valley resident Jennifer Moore makes a really good point.
"When you take your car to the mechanic, they give you a written estimate before they touch it," she told me.
"So why is it that when you go to the hospital, you have no idea how much something will cost until the bill arrives?"
Moreover, why are prices so completely different from one healthcare provider to another?
And why is it that when patients try to find out in advance how much something will cost, they're treated like unwelcome guests rather than equal partners in their own treatment?
[...] The near-total lack of transparency in healthcare pricing is a key reason we have the highest costs in the world — roughly twice what people in other developed countries pay.
Simply put, drugmakers, hospitals, labs and other medical providers face no accountability for their frequently obscene charges because it's often impossible for patients to know how badly they're being ripped off.
[...] Moore's insurer, Cigna, was charged $2,758 by the medical center for the two ultrasounds. However, Cigna gets a contractual discount of just over $1,000 because it's, well, Cigna. All insurers cut such sweetheart deals with medical providers.
That lowered the bill to $1,739. Cigna paid $500. That left a balance of $1,239, for which Mika was entirely responsible because she hadn't met her $1,250 deductible for the year.
Moore quickly ascertained online that the average cost for a pair of ultrasounds is about $500 — meaning the medical center's original $2,758 charge represented a more than 400% markup.
Cigna's lower contractual charge of $1,739 still meant the bill had been marked up more than 200%.
And the $1,239 Mika had to pay was more than twice the national average.
Wait, it gets even worse.
Moore said that after working her way through various levels of customer service in the medical center's billing department, she learned that the cash price for the two ultrasounds was $521.
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-07-29/column-could-our-healthcare-system-be-any-dumber
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 03 2019, @10:41AM (1 child)
Yes, it's legal (health care in the US is a for-profit industry, and treating the customers/patients is a secondary concern to maximizing profits). The credit check will show up on credit reports, but the customer/patient has to approve the credit check or they simply won't be seen by a doctor (let alone receive treatment).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 04 2019, @12:28AM
The thing about the people who complain about this type of "progressive" pricing is they also demand progressive taxation. You can't have it both ways.
USA is the most progressive country on the fucking planet, and all businesses operate that way. Sure you think the guy paying 10k is getting the same kind of treatment as the guy paying 100k? No he is not, it's the difference between a new car with no options and the one that costs 3x as much. The business will operate to ensure as many people as can own cars, hell two if possible, but the way they go about delivering cars to people is quite different depending on what they can afford. Now some people will claim"oh you shouldn't do that! everyone should have same level of care regardless of wealth!" Well that is a nice ideal, but it is not how the world works, and it will never work that way. Even in countries where everyone is "equal" by being equally poor, the elites still get better treatment by going outside the country.