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Even for non-emergency care, it's not feasible to shop around in the US healthcare market. Doctors don't know prices. Typically, front-office staff won't know
by NoGravitas 9y ago
Even for non-emergency care, it's not feasible to shop around in the US healthcare market.
Doctors don't know prices. Typically, front-office staff won't know prices until they've talked to your insurance company. It's probably not possible to get prices from your insurance company except in the context of a very specific claim, which can only come from the doctor's office or hospital's office staff. A small difference in coding for the same issue/procedure can result in huge cost differences.
It might be possible to shop around for prices on particular surgical procedures (eg), but only after you've paid an unpredictable amount for diagnosis. And you may have to pay twice for diagnosis to make this possible.
- maxerickson 9y agoI believe their point was in the abstract. In a system where it is feasible to shop around, people will tend to do so and it will put downward pressure on prices. Maybe the thing to do is to start treating insurance-hospital networks that do not disclose pricing as collusion. It certainly makes no sense to me that our system has individual patients having adversarial dealings with 2 huge institutions every time they need care.