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The doctors and hospitals are only charging that much because of a long running history of insurers otherwise not paying out. If they charge $50, insurance wil
by s5300 5y ago
The doctors and hospitals are only charging that much because of a long running history of insurers otherwise not paying out.
If they charge $50, insurance will begrudgingly pay $5 if you're lucky.
So you have to charge $5000 for something fairly simple, in order to hopefully get close to $500
- kindle-dev 5y agoThis argument makes no sense. Medical bills are the number 1 cause of bankruptcy. Hospitals knowingly employ out-of-network doctors so they can bill patients huge sums directly.
- robbedpeter 5y agoMaybe some "John Q Public" meets "Man On Fire" could shake things up. The trouble with civility is the people and institutions who exploit it.
- s5300 5y agoI'm speaking directly from word of more than one personal doctor friend and a family member of mine that is the head management of an emergency room. I may be completely incorrect with this information - but I was told that prices are so high due to people on the insurance side of things being dicks about it, not the doctors/hospitals. There is a massive issue with how the medical boards artificially restrict # of doctors/residents and what else, leading to price issues, but that is not the discussion we're having
- noduerme 5y agoAgreed. This is a case where an unfree market has arrived at the most absurd and circuitous route to everyone getting a slice of the pie. It's crazy that a lot of Americans fight any reform of the insurance industry on the grounds that doing so would constitute socialism or an attack on the free market. What we have right now is the furthest thing from a free market. It's a set of local monopolies fixing prices, and another group (doctors) trying to get paid in a broken system.