SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Bonkers pricing of "free" flu shots shows what's wrong with US healthcare
The annual flu shots that are free to those with health insurance are not immune from the convoluted and contemptible price-gouging that plague the US healthcare system.
Health insurance companies pay wildly different amounts for the same vaccines depending on how negotiations go with individual medical providers across the country. In some cases, providers have forced insurers to pay upward of three times the price they would pay to other providers, according to an investigation by Kaiser Health News.
The outlet noted that one Sacramento, California, doctors' office got an insurer to pay $85 for a flu shot that it offered to uninsured patients for $25.
Though $85 might seem like a trifling amount in the bloated scheme of the US healthcare system, such prices quickly add up as tens of millions of people receive a flu shot each year. And while the Affordable Care Act requires insurers to cover the full costs of all federally recommended vaccines, including the flu vaccine, any extra costs to insurers get passed on to patients through higher insurance premiums, economists told KHN.
Looking further at what insurers paid for flu vaccines, KHN found that costs spanned the whole range from $25 to $85. A doctor in Long Beach, California, got insurer Cigna to pay $47.53 for a shot, while a CVS in downtown Washington, DC, got $32 from Cigna for the same shot. A CVS just 10 miles away in Maryland got $40.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Thursday November 21 2019, @12:29PM (3 children)
My understanding of the math is a flu shot giving nurse might get $30/hr
Now if the nurse works an 8 hour shift and gives 90 shots, that's a shot every 5 minutes which is impressive and the labor cost will be a mere $3 or so.
Now lets assume that it snows and everyone older than 50 stays home freaked out by fox news panic reports (although snow is not unusual where I live) so only 10 people show up during the nurses shift. Thats about $30 of labor cost per shot.
You'll get aggressive customer service arguments about the shot. If you don't have enough nurses sitting around scrolling facebook for 6 hours per day doing nothing, then during the rush hour at end of shift from 5-7pm you might only give like 20 shots and the labor cost will be huge. Possibly parents won't immunize their kids after school if the wait time from 3pm to 5pm is over ten minutes (kids are not patient). More nurses will result in more wasted time but far more immunizations.
Note that in far left communities like Reddit, for whatever weird religious reasons, vaccinations have turned into a religious obligation with predictable opinions about those non-immunized. The point in bringing this up is the clinc (flu, not STD?) next to the hipster bar is going to do booming business with low labor cost per shot, but less insane areas will do less booming business with higher labor cost per shot.
Also correct for time. My old bank (moved to credit union long ago) had limited office hours so if they tried to pimp flu shots at a bank they simply can't dump as many labor hours as a 24x7 supermarket could. You can't lose $30/hr at 3am on labor at a bank when the bank isn't open, but you COULD waste that labor money at a 24x7 grocery or walmart or whatever.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 21 2019, @03:35PM
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Thursday November 21 2019, @10:29PM
Also the vaccine itself has a cost to it. IIRC (and I could well be wrong...) it's somewhere in the neighborhood of $12ish per dose. And you need to buy 'enough'... how many doses do you get stuck with after the fact and you end up eating the cost on them? And/or run out and you have to send people elsewhere....
This sig for rent.
(Score: 1) by Sulla on Friday November 22 2019, @12:55AM
At a pharmacy the negotiations over the sale of a flu shot are done by technicians or cashiers who make 12-19/hour depending on experience and location, they do this while taking care of other duties.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam