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One reason for the bizarro healthcare pricing situation is that hospitals can claim the writedown (difference between huge fake price and actual price) as a los
by seranwrap400 10y ago
One reason for the bizarro healthcare pricing situation is that hospitals can claim the writedown (difference between huge fake price and actual price) as a loss when filing taxes. A few changes to the Internal Revenue Code would help put a stop to this.
- MBCook 10y agoIRS code is the same way we got in to the nonsense of almost everyone getting their insurance through their employer, which led to the situation where there was almost no market for individual policies. That meant they were insanely expensive and the cost effective only way to get healthcare was to be employed by a big company. And that meant switching jobs could be insanely expensive. And that meant you could pay people less because you had a form of lock-in. Don't want to lose that pre-existing condition coverage. One little text change, design to either give companies more compensation options or promote health insurance (I'm not sure which) had a really huge unintended effect on the way the entire employment system runs.
- tehlike 10y agoa little context on the healthcare insurance by employer system: During WW2, the US banned increasing employee compensation, so employers looked for alternatives and they figured insurance would be one area. That's how the US got into the mess of "employer takes up the bill" :) ref: http://www.nber.org/papers/w14839.pdf?new_window=1 http://www.nber.org/papers/w14839.pdf?new_window=1 So wars have long lasting impacts on the society, taxes and insurance are some important examples.
- MBCook 10y agoI didn't realize it was a war thing. Thanks.