What amases me is NO ONE talks about bringing medical costs down. All they can talk about is who is going to pay and how?
My wife recently had a kidney stone zapped by a laser. Out patient, was in the hospital 2 hours. $39,000 plus the doctor bill $8 K plus.
Until costs are contained we will all suffer.
That ztrikes me as more than a bit high, but I don’t know the technology involved.
The reason costs are so high; is because providers participate in a practice known as "cost shifting"...where paying customers (patients and insurance carriers) are being gouged to pay for all the "free healthcare" they have to provide.
That practice should be banned, and some other funding mechanism initialized.
The hospitals face losses from "charity care"...unpaid co-pays and insufficient reimbursement from medicaid. That is usually at a level below the hospital's cost.
Like PJ O'Rourke once said: "If you think healthcare is expensive now, wait till it's free".
A few years ago I asked my doctor to test my stomach acid ph level. She said at first that she could do it in the office and the cost would be $500. After checking her equipment, she said she didn’t have the right probe in stock and that I’d have to go to the hospital.
I went over there at the appointed time and sat down for the pre-procedure paperwork and was told that the cost would be $5000. I was shocked. It is the same test. Why the 10x increase? The person assured me that my insurance company had already approved the whole amount and my out of pocket cost would be only $500. I still walked out because it made no sense to me to facilitate my insurance company’s support of people who don’t pay. I didn’t need the stupid test that badly anyway.
What did her insurance company hammer it down to? Have ever heard of Chargemaster? AKA the starting point?
If she didn't have insurance, what did she end up having to pay?
It’s actually the same question. When someone else is paying, nobody cares what stuff costs. Traditional insurance is collectivist with correspondingly evil results, which is why it needs trimmed back to the greatest feasible degree, not spread far and wide as in Ebolacare. HSAs with high deductible catastrophic plans as the only system for anyone and costs would come down. The only category of health care services that are increasing in quality and decreasing in cost are elective ones ones NOT covered by govt or insurance where people can (in fact must) look at cost/benefit.