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Anecdotes and all that, but a friend of mine had Deep Brain Stimulation surgery for his essential tremor. The surgery was performed at Stanford and the total bi

Anecdotes and all that, but a friend of mine had Deep Brain Stimulation surgery for his essential tremor. The surgery was performed at Stanford and the total bill was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. His out of pocket charge? ~$1200. I have a hard time rationalizing his recent experience with the assertion that you have to be a millionaire to receive top-flight care.

ryandrake 6y ago
Your friend must have outstanding insurance. Our out-of-pocket for a standard run-of-the-mill baby delivery with no complications was several thousand dollars--after what I thought was pretty good tech-company provided health insurance. I'll never forget my wife's reaction (who is not from the USA) at how absurd it is that someone would have to pay any money, let alone thousands of dollars, to have a baby.
- gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago
  I'm against the concept of privatised healthcare completely but within the privatised paradigm insurance only works properly to share risk across a population. A normal birth is not really an insurable event. Normal births are not a risk (in the sense of risk being a semi random events) since on average each women an America has about 2 in their life. In a privatised system insurance make sense as something to cover the risk of complications during a birth. So in a functioning privatised system with insurance working as it theoretically should any birth whether simple or with huge complications should cost the same amount of money. This is similar to dental most people spend X±Y amount of money over their life on dental work where X is high and Y is low. Insurance only works properly where X is lower and Y is higher (for example getting a rare cancer that costs $1million to treat is a very insurable event). Where dental is covered by 'insurance' the person paying for the insurance policy would be better just paying the dentist directly. Meanwhile I am glad I live in a society with a nationalized health system where births cost nothing.
- aerostable_slug 6y ago
  I have never figured out what "outstanding" insurance is, and my late father was a physician. I just go with a PPO because that seems less crappy than the alternative. If anyone knows what metric leads to outcomes like my friend's (I'm not being facetious here), I would like to know.

ryandrake 6y ago

Your friend must have outstanding insurance. Our out-of-pocket for a standard run-of-the-mill baby delivery with no complications was several thousand dollars--after what I thought was pretty good tech-company provided health insurance. I'll never forget my wife's reaction (who is not from the USA) at how absurd it is that someone would have to pay any money, let alone thousands of dollars, to have a baby.

gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago
I'm against the concept of privatised healthcare completely but within the privatised paradigm insurance only works properly to share risk across a population. A normal birth is not really an insurable event. Normal births are not a risk (in the sense of risk being a semi random events) since on average each women an America has about 2 in their life. In a privatised system insurance make sense as something to cover the risk of complications during a birth. So in a functioning privatised system with insurance working as it theoretically should any birth whether simple or with huge complications should cost the same amount of money. This is similar to dental most people spend X±Y amount of money over their life on dental work where X is high and Y is low. Insurance only works properly where X is lower and Y is higher (for example getting a rare cancer that costs $1million to treat is a very insurable event). Where dental is covered by 'insurance' the person paying for the insurance policy would be better just paying the dentist directly. Meanwhile I am glad I live in a society with a nationalized health system where births cost nothing.
aerostable_slug 6y ago
I have never figured out what "outstanding" insurance is, and my late father was a physician. I just go with a PPO because that seems less crappy than the alternative. If anyone knows what metric leads to outcomes like my friend's (I'm not being facetious here), I would like to know.