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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: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday August 03 2019, @03:57PM
Oh, woe is Big Pharma! They will certainly DIE if we had a reasonable payment system for most people.**
No, they wouldn't. Be rational. You don't outlaw private insurance. This is where we make the huge amount of inequality in the U.S. work for everyone! It's all simple -- rich people will continue to pay ridiculous sums just to live a little longer. Let them. They can subsidize Big Pharma and "innovation." Capitalism at work.
Meanwhile, give everyone at least an OPTION for reasonable healthcare. Maybe it's 5 years behind what the rich get (or whatever is worked out), so you can't get the latest experimental treatment that will cost you a million dollars a year. But Big Pharma gets its stupid profits to "innovate" (as well as pay its CEOs, which is where a huge amount of this is going too), the average American gets healthcare, and money is siphoned out of the rich to decrease inequality maybe just a little in the name of improving society overall. Win-win for everyone!
Oh, but wait -- you object that the rich should pay more? Nope, that's capitalism for you. The idea of a "fixed price" is a socialist construct come up by Quakers and other liberals, forced on the population in the late 19th century. Before that, most goods had to be negotiated for, and if a seller sensed you had more money to pay, chances are you'd be offered a higher price. We return to the roots of capitalism to save "innovation" -- isn't that what you want?!
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**Not to mention that the current state of medicine is high enough that the average lifespan has been extended well beyond what many people could expect a few generations ago. I'd be happy if I continued to have access to the current level of medical care for the remainder of my life, if it were offered at reasonable cost.