Posted on 03/07/2017 7:18:50 PM PST by Wisconsinlady
there is one in Post falls that does. Its 100 miles south west of me, but 3 position x ray was 100$ verses 450$ from the hospital without insurance. My insurance has a deductible for me to pay. When that deductible is met, then they pay about 80% of the bills.
“But you only get the cash discount when no claim is submitted. So you never get anywhere toward the deductible.”
No argument. I am just saying, I prefer the mechanism where I obtain a service and pay for it, done finished, end.
I believe that the insertion or inclusion of any third party into a transaction MUST result in that third party siphoning some amount of money out of the deal, eg; “nobody works for free”.
Now, in a real estate transaction we know pretty much in advance that a realtor or the buy-sell pair of realtors want about 6% of the deal in total. In many cases, certainly not all, Realtors perform a very valuable service in that they diffuse some of the deal-killing emotional content people get into when they sell their homes that they love, or hate, or when big amounts of money are involved. For let’s say 80+% of healthcare deliveries, HC ins cos provide ZERO service, it is just a goofy cost shifting exercise “thanks for the nice work doc, ask that guy over there to pay your bill”. So, OK, if the med ins co got a 5-10% commission on a reasonable procedure cost, fair enough. The issue as I see it is that the med ins co wants a 700% commission on the bashed-in cost they are able to negotiate with the providers. And I think that’s bizarre and that HC costs will NEVER come down as long as that mechanism is in place. Huge, overblown costs will just get shoved this way and that way but they will not disappear.
The whole mechanism for non-catastrophic HC is just astronomically stupid. It is dependent upon (at least) 2 gross distortions: 1: that people don’t want to pay for what they get (and why of all things, HC, a thing that potentially keeps them alive, is less deserving of being worth paying for than 90% of whatever else they spend money on is unfathomable, to me) and 2: That ins cos can negotiate huge discounts due to the position they have attained over the historical course of this whole thing of “don’t wanna pay for it” but are absolutely disinterested in passing on the discounts they are able to achieve. I am not anti-capitalist, but it is the ins co voracious greed that underlies the 9%/year HC cost increases squeezing the life out of much of the economy.
And a projected scale for possible complications.
A huge portion of which is paid to those who handle bills covered by insurance!
Good post. I think you nailed it.
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