-— My Mom is on Medicare so when she goes to our doctor its $175.00 when I go to the same doctor and pay cash its $40.00 -—
In a truly free market, third party payments drive up costs, but not that much. Hospitals bill the insurance companies more to cover the costs of non-payers.
“-— My Mom is on Medicare so when she goes to our doctor its $175.00 when I go to the same doctor and pay cash its $40.00 -—”
Yeah, but Medicare probably actually pays the doc only $25.00 of that billed $175.00.
Our doctor says he has to hire one personjust for the insurance paperwork so thats a fulltime salary that he would not need if he was a fee based practice.
One of the things that drives up the cost of tests and everything else is that the insurance company gets the bill or the govt if its Medicare. If the patient was being billed the cost would be way less.
ER cost is about half if you pay cash. Mr. GG2 went to the ER a couple of years ago. The cost was almost $1200. They asked him how he would pay and he said cash so then it was $675.