Posted on 12/11/2021 3:09:45 AM PST by blueplum
Ridiculous, seemingly arbitrary price markups are a defining characteristic of the $4-trillion U.S. healthcare system — and a key reason Americans pay more for treatment than anyone else in the world.
But to see price hikes of as much as 675% being imposed in real time, automatically, by a hospital's computer system still takes your breath away....
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
Forty years ago my neighbor spent three days in the hospital. His bill was horrendous. We looked at the itemized print-out and counted 97 bags of drip that were charged to him. I can’t remember what else we found, but the drip bags will stay in my mind forever.
Wow...what a racket.
Too entrenched to be changed I would guess...the old system just creaks along becoming more and more broken but, hey...we all makin moneee...
⬆📌
That said, hospital financial management have developed computer algorithms to bundle and unbundle charges and diagnosis to maximize payment for services. There is no free market in healthcare.
I blame Nixon.
When they allowed companies to sell you health insurance as a benefit, you never saw the actual costs anymore.
I don’t get my car insurance from my company. I don’t get my homeowners insurance from my company. What do I get my health insurance?
And I just got a new contract from the new company and they want $415 a week. Before Osh*thead I used to pay $350 a month.
Because of this I’ve gone without health insurance for those years. And I paid out-of-pocket. And we’re talking a broken arm, several hospital visits, plus major dental for me and my children. And I still estimate I’ve saved over $50,000.
I’m currently making more than I ever have in my life and half of it is going to the government. I could have bought each of my children a house in the last six years, For what I’ve given to the government.
I could have paid off my house in five years, instead I had a 20 year mortgage, because of taxes taken by the government.
Great post. A reminder that the working class is truly footing the bill for everyone. Dems have regulated your very health since Hillarycare. Grinding us between the millstones of taxation and inflation. Healthcare is a tax on the working class. Time to set up alternative care.
Wow! - Who knew?
The establishment medical system is really a criminal cartel. I will not and have not been ripped off by those wicked and sleazy thieves.
Don’t-worry. Obamacare will fix it. It is so good it’s mandatory.
I spent a week with sepsis. By the time I found all the overcharged garbage they knocked down the bill by half.
I don’t get my car insurance from my company. I don’t get my homeowners insurance from my company. What do I get my health insurance?
unlike your other insurance items, with health insurance you pay for whether you may live or die, if very ill. It’s very personal, you are paying for your life and body’s well being, whereas your other insurance policies are for loss of concrete items that can be replaced You yourself can’t be exchanged for a clone of yourself. There’s only one you. Bit of a difference there, wouldn’t you say?
Yep this had been going on since long before O-Care. Been through a LOT of itemized bills over the years. Sometimes the mark up is 1,000%. And padding it with more than actually received is a rampant practice.
First experience at the scam was when we had our second daughter in 88. Being in business and doing my own bookkeeping it was a habit to request and line item all bills. Started going through the bills for the delivery and hospital stay for two days and found something right away. We were being billed for TWO deliveries. Ours which was natural, and a second that was cesarean section.
Turned out that one of the hospital staff in billing had a daughter who had an emergency C-section and the baby did not make it and died. So because she did not want to pay for it she tacked it onto our bill hoping we were too stupid to request the full itemized bill and would just pay both without question. It was she who ended up paying both or go to jail with full approval of the hospital. They got off cheap...
And why does that mean I should buy it from my employer?
Did you ever study economics 101? Or did you entirely miss the point of my post?
I can’t go shopping for it, and price compare. All the healthcare costs are hidden from me. With co-pays I pay the same price no matter where I go, wether the pharmacist charges 100 bucks or 200 bucks for the same drug.
It totally destroys supply and demand.
Trump’s requirement that hospitals publish rates was a step in the right direction that got erased immediately after the steal.
I was listening to a podcast with 2 DPC (direct primary care) doctors. These docs exclude insurance companies - everything is between the doc and patient. Patients pay a monthly fee (less than a gym membership) - can get appointments pretty much same day or next, can text doctor if something comes up - get actual HEALTH care rather than have health insurance.
Two examples talked about by the DPC docs:
Patient came in limping ... she was being treated for Type 2 Diabestes (getting rid of it), but the doc asked about the limp. She was having hip problems ... had been waiting over a year for an MRI. Doc asked if she could afford $300 because that was the price of an MRI he could get her .... she had her MRI the very same day.
One of the DPC docs got the medical records for a new patient. It looked like the patient had all these issues so he started asking about them. Oh, I see you have ‘this’ - no, I don’t have that. What about ‘this’? No, I don’t have that either. There were 4 or 5 conditions/diseases the patient was coded for and the patient had none of them. This was not an uncommon occurrence with medical files this doc was looking at (when he changed his practice to DPC, he was getting new patients). The gist of this is that patients are being “upcoded” many times .... the more codes a patient has, the more the doc gets paid .... sort of like those 97 drip bags.
Yeah, going through the bill for Mrs rktman’s gall bladder removal and was (but shouldn’t have been) suprised to see some items that were in bundles of 6 or 10 or 12 with a notation saying they must be ordered in the multi packs. Pretty sure they didn’t “use” every one in the package but billed none the less. CHA CHING!!!!$$$$$
I’m in a neighborhood of elderly folks, and I don’t punch a clock so I’m available to take people to doctor appointments and sit with them. I hear a lot.
Medicine is now as impersonal as the automat. Doctors overbook and overcharge, and whenever possible they avoid patients. Physician assistants and nurses are now the ones seeing patients. And since covid, they don’t want to see patients either.
Meanwhile a self-paying walk-in like me would part with maybe $30 for the same ride on the assembly line that insurance is billed $100+ for.
Personal friends in the medical field tell me that “all” doctors now are basically cogs in the machine. There’s not enough self-paying patients to keep a doctor in business.
They comply with the requirements of the insurance behemoth, and they don’t risk their careers on frivolous pursuits like independent thinking. They don’t physically touch patients if they can avoid it — let some nurse look in eyes and ears. Machines and blood labs will diagnose; doctors will read printouts.
All that’s missing in the picture now, is the bar code on the neck, the microchip in the head. Coming soon.
Most of the building in Philly is being done by the hospital systems. Penn, Jeff, Temple with some going out of business (Hanamann). I used to pay all of them from my system at about $8B per year. Every year in June they would cry for advance payments to make their balance sheets look good. ANd it doesn’t matter what the billing says. The insco pays the contract rates. Medicare is a set rate as is Medicaid but mostly based on billing so they jack up the billing to jack up the medicare reimbursement. I have no idea how they can bill 75% higher than actual cost and not have issues with balance sheets.
Dems have regulated your very health since Hillarycare. Insurance has been regulated long before hillary. They just made it worse at the fed level.
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