FYIFWIW
The Surgery Center of Oklahoma. All prices posted ahead of time. Any complications are covered at the Center’s expense. Which is why they have such a low rate of them.
Finally, we need to get the practitioners of modern medicine to recognize an age-old reality: there is no cure for old age itself. Maybe someday we’ll be able to 3-D print a new body and have the data in our brain downloaded to it. But for the time being, when the body begins to break down systemically, we should let nature take its course.
The rate guide for hours to perform a job is how they get paid. Even under/over what it took to do the job.
Just saying...
Author should do some basic reading of the works of those he cites.
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I think the blues started in texas.
It is a personal peeve of mine how difficult it is to find out what a hospital charges for services. When I ask them, they answer with a question "Who's your insurance provider?" It shouldn't be a game, or cryptic. The irony of this system is that the self-insured pay the most. There shouldn't be ten different secret prices for the same service— Capitalism dies in darkness.
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Did not mention anything about state and federal regulations such as the certificate of public need which prevents anyone from competing on a low cost basis with the hospitals. They use these regulations to keep out competition. As hospitals consolidate they become more or less a monopoly
bmp
The author is probably a shill for the medical industry, perhaps even tainted by pharma dollars.
There are so many glaring details missing from his fawning history on medicine and “hospital insurance” to Medicare - to state nothing of the omission of the elephant in the room (if you read the article it’s patently obvious) - I want my 5 minutes back.
Oh, and not a single citation or reference. It is ironic that he authored the cited book, roundly-cited by reviewers as a cheerleader for big business & the wealthy. Nope, no coincidence at all. /s
Tip: If you read the article, have a towel: He uses lots of lotion. His book is probably worse.
I disagreed with one point. Flu shots should be covered by insurance as a communicable disease that has the potential to spread rapidly to the whole population. It is not like a scraped knee.
I would add that medical education is so expensive that many doctors have huge debt upon finishing their training. This could be offset by pro-bono care delivered to the poor. Additionally, pro-bono care could be delivered in lieu of taxation on real income. This would ease the burden of treating the poor on society as a whole.
Good article overall.
There is no constraint on supply?
Have you tried to staff a 600 bed hospital 24x7 with nurses and support staff?
There is no problem getting the beds full of people who can’t pay—but getting the funds and staff to treat them is difficult these days.