These are not fantasy prices -- they're real. They're what you could have today, or darn close to them if we had a conversation about competitive markets in medicine. I didn't pull these numbers out of my ass; they're on a "concierge" site for a "direct care" practice in Michigan and none of them are being provided at a loss.
The concierge site in Michigan is not using its prices to pay for obstetrical care for illegal aliens, treatment for drug addicts with bacteria eating their hearts, mobile coronary care units on standby 24/7/365 within 15 minutes of your house, or dialysis for anyone with kidney failure regardless of ability to pay.
The pricing structure of hospitals pays for all those things and much, much more. They even pay for 3 shifts of nurses, seven days a week, and you don’t get a separate bill for that. It’s priced in with the aspirin.
Obviously your own personal bills would (probably) be much cheaper if the system didn’t have you paying for everyone else also, but everyone else doing without is not an option you will ever be offered.
The only way to make the basic unit of care for everyone cheaper, affordable even, is to blow up the “insurance” industry and have Medicare pay direct.
You aren’t just paying for a CT scan (for example) when you get a CT Scan. You’re paying for a legion of highly educated professionals to run the CT scanner, to maintain the CT scanner, to order the CT scan, to start your IV for the CT scan and to draw your blood before the CT scan (in order to evaluate your kidney function before you get the CT scan), and finally to interpret the CT scan results. That probably has a lot to do with why it all costs so much.
The concept of concierge care is great, but there are about 10 of them in the whole country. I think about 5 in the whole state of PA, 4 in Philly and one in Pittsburgh. So it’s not much help!
My wife recently had a mammogram.
Our cost was over $500 if we used insurance. It was below our deductible so we’d have to pay the full “insurance price”.
She opted to pay about $200 “cash price” instead.
Same facility/equipment/personal. And the facility suggested we pay over 60% less, so I’d guess they aren’t the ones scamming people.
We have paid similar extra fees before because we knew we’d go way over the deductible that year and in the end it was cheapest for us. But no longer since we aren’t likely to hit the deductible.
Let me start by stating I AM a healthcare professional. I have been and MD for over 30 years.
That said, I say this: How did we get to the point where it is accepted that we should GIVE healthcare to poor people? Ponder that simple question. Think about it. How can any country, culture, or society persist if it accepts a premise like this? You can not produce a sustainable community of any size when a core value is that we should work together to try to meet an infinite need with a limited supply of ANYTHING.
Sorry, but the inescapable conclusion is that we have LOST our fight, right there. It may be harsh, insensitive, and unfeeling but when we can not point out simple, unbending logical fallacy on a fundamental level because we are afraid of being called mean we have lost.
Not just Ryan, but Reince Prebuis as he was suppose to run point on the healthcare legislation!
Know why it was pulled? Had more moderate Republicans vote against it!
Ryan & Prebuis didn’t do their jobs! Huge fail!
And it only stopped Planned Parenthood funding for ONE year!! Read page 23 of CBO report!
I can hardly believe Trump supported this.
Also wondering why Freedom Caucus is taking the fall for this in Trump’s eyes.
The Myth of preexisting conditions.
In reality it is giving a free guarantied win lottery ticket to a small portion of the population who fall ill to a serious disease and chose to not purchase insurance prior to it.
Avoiding this is why we have insurance.
AHCA would not fix this because it did not remove the requirement to cover pre-existing conditions and it did not allow insurance companies to cap their liability at a set amount.
When I went into the workforce, we had “Major Medical” only and paid out of pocket for everything else. Office visits were out-of-pocket, as were prescriptions. We shopped for an inexpensive pharmacy and bought our prescriptions there. Now doctors fill out insurance forms and include the costs for form-filling in their bill.
People expect zero-co-pay and wind up paying 10 times over with the insurance company and their army of clerks.
Healthcare would be much cheaper if we still had these options.
How much “healthcare” is purely defensive medicine? IMHO, there can be no monetary reform until we change the tort laws.
We Conservatives are becoming like the MFA poets.
MFA stands for Master of Fine Arts.
The MFA poets write for other MFA poets.
They don’t write for the American public.
They write for each other.
That seems to be what we Conservatives are doing.
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These are not fantasy prices — they’re real. They’re what you could have today, or darn close to them if we had a conversation about competitive markets in medicine. I didn’t pull these numbers out of my ass; they’re on a “concierge” site for a “direct care” practice in Michigan and none of them are being provided at a loss.
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Are these post-generic alternatives too? Nobody seems to talk about the (added) costs of the FDA ‘saving’ Citizens from themselves\doctors: longer research\study period = higher re-coup costs\time. Let alone the ban on drugs from the EU that have been in use 40+ yrs.
There was nothing like visiting a Rx while in the EU (lost luggage), saying I needed X pills of Y for Z condition and they filled for the SAME cost here w/o a script....NEVER would have happened w/o a doc visit (more $$ & time).