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My CT cost $180 in the US because i bothered to shop around.. I see these articles all the time cherry-picking The only reason healthcare in the US is high is

My CT cost $180 in the US because i bothered to shop around.. I see these articles all the time cherry-picking The only reason healthcare in the US is high is government enforcing monopolies, Giving them more power over healthcare is foolish. If you are the least bit smart you call around, that is the nature of a market.

Aeolun 7y ago
When my health is on the line, I do not want to do anything like shopping around. I want the hospital I'm currently at to do the thing for a reasonable rate. Preferably the same rate as every other hospital in the country charges for the same scan.
- virmundi 7y ago
  The US is too large to have the same uniform price. The cost of materials, rent, and labor vary radically across state lines. Second, for things like CT, they might now be immediate. Therefore you can shop around. For example I had an MRI. $200 after shopping around. Now it wasn’t an emergency, just a check for cancer. Don’t let the assumed to be perfect be the enemy of the good.
  - Data_Junkie 7y ago
    The US is too corrupted with evil politicians to have adequate health care, because you need adequate, healthy people to implement that and we have Donald Trump and his kindred spirits. It's not rocket science, you have to care to make changes, and they simply don't care. Melania said it best.
- deogeo 7y ago
  Of the cases I heard where people did try to shop around, simply getting price information was nearly if not completely impossible.
- mindslight 7y ago
  > When my health is on the line, I do not want to do anything like shopping around. How do you obtain food then? Do you not go to grocery stores or restaurants? But talking about just medical services, sure there are many situations where a patient has vanishingly little opportunity to shop around, and applying the market ethic is really just a blessing to price gouge. But there are also many situations that aren't so time critical (like anything that insurance companies currently insist on "authorizing"), where it would be quite easy to shop around if providers had to charge everyone the same price and publish it.
thundergolfer 7y ago
Giving government lots of power over healthcare is demonstrably not foolish, as evidenced by all the countries having success doing just that. The whole “shopping around” thing sounds awful to me, but I don’t know specifically what it involved for you. So can you elaborate? How many people did you call? Did you do background research? How did you know who to call? Where you stressed by sickness or other life things while shopping around? Do you think you found a deal somewhere near the price floor or is it possible you can get a scan for ~$100?
themagician 7y ago
Most of the time this doesn’t work. Their is no market because their is no price transparency. The price is different for everyone based on their insurance and whether or not it’s “covered”. The ACA made this a little better since more things are forced to be covered, but not much.
tsukikage 7y ago
It is near-universally accepted that a perfectly competitive free market is an optimal means of distributing resources. That statement makes some assumptions: all the parties involved have symmetrical information, equal bargaining power, and are free to choose not to participate in the market. At the point where I am experiencing a health emergency, the resources I can devote to shopping around are limited, as is the time available to choose. Also, as I am not a health professional, my ability to compare providers by the one parameter that actually matters - the likelihood of a positive outcome - is severely limited. Meanwhile, the providers will be trying their hardest to get me to choose them, and thus bombarding me with irrelevant but comprehensible and good-sounding metrics. Finally, when the alternative is life changing injury or death, I am not really free to walk away entirely from taking a deal. (I'll not even start on the perverse incentives involved in preventative medicine vs emergencies). So the free market fails me here, at the time I most need it, in several ways: * an inequality of bargaining power exists * information asymmetry exists * I am forced by circumstance to participate Without outside intervention, in such situations, we expect the costs charged to me to rise to match or exceed my ability to pay; and this is, in fact, what we actually observe when we look at the US healthcare system. In general, free markets are great; however, for some situations, like healthcare, the assumptions that make markets work in general are not true, and to the extent they are not true, some outside force needs to step in to restore balance. In countries where the government chooses to do so, largely regardless of the precise means, healthcare systems are more efficient and are more accessible to the population.

Aeolun 7y ago

When my health is on the line, I do not want to do anything like shopping around. I want the hospital I'm currently at to do the thing for a reasonable rate. Preferably the same rate as every other hospital in the country charges for the same scan.

virmundi 7y ago
The US is too large to have the same uniform price. The cost of materials, rent, and labor vary radically across state lines. Second, for things like CT, they might now be immediate. Therefore you can shop around. For example I had an MRI. $200 after shopping around. Now it wasn’t an emergency, just a check for cancer. Don’t let the assumed to be perfect be the enemy of the good.
- Data_Junkie 7y ago
  The US is too corrupted with evil politicians to have adequate health care, because you need adequate, healthy people to implement that and we have Donald Trump and his kindred spirits. It's not rocket science, you have to care to make changes, and they simply don't care. Melania said it best.
deogeo 7y ago
Of the cases I heard where people did try to shop around, simply getting price information was nearly if not completely impossible.
mindslight 7y ago
> When my health is on the line, I do not want to do anything like shopping around. How do you obtain food then? Do you not go to grocery stores or restaurants? But talking about just medical services, sure there are many situations where a patient has vanishingly little opportunity to shop around, and applying the market ethic is really just a blessing to price gouge. But there are also many situations that aren't so time critical (like anything that insurance companies currently insist on "authorizing"), where it would be quite easy to shop around if providers had to charge everyone the same price and publish it.

thundergolfer 7y ago

Giving government lots of power over healthcare is demonstrably not foolish, as evidenced by all the countries having success doing just that. The whole “shopping around” thing sounds awful to me, but I don’t know specifically what it involved for you. So can you elaborate? How many people did you call? Did you do background research? How did you know who to call? Where you stressed by sickness or other life things while shopping around? Do you think you found a deal somewhere near the price floor or is it possible you can get a scan for ~$100?

themagician 7y ago

Most of the time this doesn’t work. Their is no market because their is no price transparency. The price is different for everyone based on their insurance and whether or not it’s “covered”. The ACA made this a little better since more things are forced to be covered, but not much.

tsukikage 7y ago

It is near-universally accepted that a perfectly competitive free market is an optimal means of distributing resources. That statement makes some assumptions: all the parties involved have symmetrical information, equal bargaining power, and are free to choose not to participate in the market. At the point where I am experiencing a health emergency, the resources I can devote to shopping around are limited, as is the time available to choose. Also, as I am not a health professional, my ability to compare providers by the one parameter that actually matters - the likelihood of a positive outcome - is severely limited. Meanwhile, the providers will be trying their hardest to get me to choose them, and thus bombarding me with irrelevant but comprehensible and good-sounding metrics. Finally, when the alternative is life changing injury or death, I am not really free to walk away entirely from taking a deal. (I'll not even start on the perverse incentives involved in preventative medicine vs emergencies). So the free market fails me here, at the time I most need it, in several ways: * an inequality of bargaining power exists * information asymmetry exists * I am forced by circumstance to participate Without outside intervention, in such situations, we expect the costs charged to me to rise to match or exceed my ability to pay; and this is, in fact, what we actually observe when we look at the US healthcare system. In general, free markets are great; however, for some situations, like healthcare, the assumptions that make markets work in general are not true, and to the extent they are not true, some outside force needs to step in to restore balance. In countries where the government chooses to do so, largely regardless of the precise means, healthcare systems are more efficient and are more accessible to the population.