Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Saturday August 03 2019, @01:44AM   Printer-friendly
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


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Saturday August 03 2019, @01:26PM (3 children)

    by Azuma Hazuki (5086) on Saturday August 03 2019, @01:26PM (#875110) Journal

    And I'll say it AGAIN for all the people who apparently aren't fucking listening: "supply and demand" is a dangerous oversimplification. Demand varies in its elasticity; for a very inelastic demand, say for lifesaving healthcare, "letting the free market decide" leads to hostage situations, quite literally "your money or your life!" scenarios. And very often it's both.

    Single-payer is the solution to this. Not even the Nixonian idea of price ceilings and price floors will do it. Single. Payer. Now there may be some wisdom to letting it be administered on the state level rather than direct from the patient to the fed.gov, but that's about it.

    Know what the real problem here is? It's not cost of R&D. It's not scarcity except in a few cases. It's not, God damn it all, "regulation." It's parasitic, rent-seeking middlemen. Rent-seeking is anathema to capitalism and the fact that it's allowed at all makes a mockery of the concept.

    --
    I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +3  
       Insightful=2, Informative=1, Total=3
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 03 2019, @01:36PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 03 2019, @01:36PM (#875114)

    Supply and demand has nothing to do with healthcare prices in the US, it is all due to carving out a tax break for health insurance benefits and then medicare/medicaid distorting the market.

    • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 03 2019, @02:13PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 03 2019, @02:13PM (#875134)

      That's basically what was said, there is no actual free market just hostages and extortionists.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 05 2019, @01:25PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 05 2019, @01:25PM (#875926)

      That sounds like Australia