3 ms·

But you are missing my point and that of joc815 below you - if I knew the cost, then I could determine whether or not to become a customer. In the absence of a

But you are missing my point and that of joc815 below you - if I knew the cost, then I could determine whether or not to become a customer. In the absence of a clear cost structure, I can't answer the question of whether I can afford the care or not.

dragonwriter 8y ago
> But you are missing my point and that of joc815 below you - if I knew the cost, then I could determine whether or not to become a customer. “If you have to ask, you can't afford it.” Or, more to the point, medical procedures often have an unbounded upper limit on potential billed costs, without the opportunity to stop work and inform the customer and get new instructions when it is realized that the original estimate will be exceeded, and even getting a reasonable idea of the statistical distribution of charges for a particular procedure under costly comparable conditions by the same provider wouldn't be easy. Now, providers could adopt a flat fee structure and eat the risk of long-tail costs, but that creates a lot of risk (and some perverse incentives) for providers.
- jsoc815 8y ago
  > “If you have to ask, you can't afford it.” Unless we're discussing medical care as a luxury good-- and if that's the way that we really want to approach this, okay, let's just be honest about that-- this is incorrect. In my experience, med professionals have made assumptions about what I could and couldn't afford based on their mental databases of flawed correlations. Things they thought I probably couldn't pay for, not only could I have if necessary, but didn't need to because my insurance was willing to cover it any way. I'm not going to address the rest of what you've written because, quite frankly, I have a difficult time believing that you are being serious, for a number of reasons. If I'm mistaken, then I thank you for sharing an interesting thought pattern and apologize in advance.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> But you are missing my point and that of joc815 below you - if I knew the cost, then I could determine whether or not to become a customer. “If you have to ask, you can't afford it.” Or, more to the point, medical procedures often have an unbounded upper limit on potential billed costs, without the opportunity to stop work and inform the customer and get new instructions when it is realized that the original estimate will be exceeded, and even getting a reasonable idea of the statistical distribution of charges for a particular procedure under costly comparable conditions by the same provider wouldn't be easy. Now, providers could adopt a flat fee structure and eat the risk of long-tail costs, but that creates a lot of risk (and some perverse incentives) for providers.

jsoc815 8y ago
> “If you have to ask, you can't afford it.” Unless we're discussing medical care as a luxury good-- and if that's the way that we really want to approach this, okay, let's just be honest about that-- this is incorrect. In my experience, med professionals have made assumptions about what I could and couldn't afford based on their mental databases of flawed correlations. Things they thought I probably couldn't pay for, not only could I have if necessary, but didn't need to because my insurance was willing to cover it any way. I'm not going to address the rest of what you've written because, quite frankly, I have a difficult time believing that you are being serious, for a number of reasons. If I'm mistaken, then I thank you for sharing an interesting thought pattern and apologize in advance.