I and my friends without healthcare insurance are finding, everywhere, that health care - even "big" stuff - is not really that expensive. and compared to the cost of health care insurance, it's downright cheap. This is yet another example.
An MRI done, with all the trimmings, with an out the door price of under $400. Why pay the equivalent of your house payment for insurance that won't even touch that until you get to your 20th MRI in a year thanks to the sky high deductible.
Health insurance is a scam and a ripoff.
I made a mistake when I posted this. I had tried to post content from here: http://www.cincinnati.com/story/news/2014/11/22/cheap-mris-proliferate-even-groupon/19431111/
However, the post feature would not let me, so I got the same info from another source and copied that info into the OP. However, rather than delete the original content, it just added it to the top. Sorry about that.
Cash only doctors
http://money.cnn.com/2013/06/11/news/economy/cash-only-doctors/index.html
Insurance is not a scam. It still has a role but it not meant for everyday expenses.
One commentator, I think it was John Stossel, made the point on elective surgeries being enormously cheap based on market forces. LASIK vision correction is highly sought, but cheap and getting cheaper in such an active market.
I can’t imagine any other procedure being different.
I had a relative call toward the end of 2016 ago from an MRI facility. There were 2 options
* Use insurance - pay about $500 left for the deductible that year (the insurer would be billed an additional $200+)
* Pay about $300 cash.
She didn’t know what to do (didn’t believe it). I said to pay cash since 2016 was almost over and no more big expenses would happen that year to make it worth paying the entire deductible. She paid cash and it really was $300 and got what her doctor wanted.
I found an MRI in the Pittsburgh area for $350 and all the same included except the professional opinion.
I was thrilled to be able to travel from Dr office to Dr office and negotiate an operation.
Turns out it is RA, but still .... that was not that long ago.
P4L
This is in Ohio...
Anybody know of an MRI service like this in the northeast? MA, CT, RI, NH, ME, etc?
LASIK is a good example of how healthcare will be impacted by a competitive market.
No, it's the law. As long as the vest interests that benefit from that law finance the campaigns of the politicians it will remain the law.
Outside the district campaign financing is the greatest flaw of our political system.
bookmark
Single payer health systems will lead to them deciding if your 11 year old child lives or dies not you.
Totally. I live in the hidden world without insurance. We are members of
Liberty Health Share and we are
Mostly cash pay patients so we use medical services carefully, the way a family pays for food, transportation, vacations. We’re
Set for
Catastrophic and we do due diligence to find cheaper
Ways to have tests and other health services. There is a whole world
Of Us out there. The doctors and providers love it and we love it. Google self pay patient and just start discovering. You can travel out of state for procedures too and save $.
Reality is refreshing. This communist single payer stuff is total BS.
Our system encourages waste. You spend hundreds a month, for years, not needing any (significant) medical care. Then, when you need something, neither you or your doctor are spending their own money - you’re both spending a 3rd parties money (insurance company). Of course, the “give me the works” attitude kicks in, from both patient and doctor. The patient wants the best care possible and the doctor can be held liable if they don’t (and something happens).
This entire 3-way system, which is really a 4-way system when you include lawyers, does nothing but encourage high costs. Of course, nobody feel sorry for the insurance industry because any denial of coverage makes them look like monsters. If they didn’t though the costs would go up even faster.
This low-cost MRI, along with LASIC, are great examples of lowering cost via competition when the consumer spends their own money. Somehow, we need to inject this approach into medicine in general. Maybe have insurance companies provide a percent based reimbursement of health services purchased, so it’s in my best interests to shop around.
Single Payer lie = MULTI TAX PAYER Healthcare
Well, in the case of this company, they can provide MRIs cheaper for several reasons.
1. They don’t have to eat the cost of delivering illegal alien babies for free, or providing other services for free.
2. They don’t have to mess with insurance company forms and the associated billing departments and bureaucracy
3. They don’t have to mess with government bureaucracy.
Those 3 things alone will probably eliminate half the cost of providing services.
I have been preaching this for years: The single most important change for lowering the cost of health care is to require transparency so that consumers can comparative shop for services. Nearly every state has consumer protection laws that require grocery stores, retail stores, gas stations, car dealerships, etc. to clearly mark the total price and/or unit price of the items for sale so that consumers know the price before they buy and can comparative shop for a lower price if they so choose.
Prior to Obamacare, health care consumers did not have to comparative shop because most consumers only had to pay a flat co-pay regardless of the actual cost of the service or procedure, which brings me to the second most important change for lowering the cost of health care: Create an incentive for health care consumers to comparative shop by getting rid of the flat fee co-pay. Instead, set co-pays as a percentage of the cost of the medical service or procedure so that the consumer has skin in the game and a reason to comparative shop. Better yet, get rid of co-pays altogether and require the consumer to pay out-of-pocket and seek reimbursement from the health insurer.
The third most important change for lowering the cost of health care is to prohibit health care insurers from penalizing providers for charging consumers less than the negotiated insurance rate for medical care.
There are just not enough of these alternatives to make a big impact.
People have been conditioned to believe the hospital or big clinic are a monopoly, that there are no alternatives. The markup for a lab suite is 1000%. In a normal competitive market you or I should be able to do this for 500% and still be quite profitable and happy with our profit. Indeed, someone could be quite happy to do it for 250% profit undercutting costs by approximately 75% from the norm.
Why isn’t it done? Becuause the regulators and the medical emprie have created and protect their monopoly.
Eisenhower got it wrong. It is not the vast military industrial complex we should have feared. It is the VAST MEDICAL COMPLEX that has consumed us and takes 1/4 of our economy and yet still never has enough.