9 ms·

The disappointing thing to me is all the time spent on this case: lawyers, administrators, jury members, and so on that could be doing something different, hope

The disappointing thing to me is all the time spent on this case: lawyers, administrators, jury members, and so on that could be doing something different, hopefully more meaningful to society. People blame the hospitals but this the game they have to play in order to cover their costs [1]. Just seems like a tremendous waste of resources and social cost. https://truecostofhealthcare.org/hospital_financial_analysis/ https://truecostofhealthcare.org/hospital_financial_analysis...

macintux 4y ago
I'd be curious how much money is spent each year on the bureaucracy of healthcare, from employees who do little besides manage health insurance, insurance company employees, billing specialists in medical establishments, etc, etc, etc.
ktzar 4y ago
Private medical services are a very profitable business for certain professions that buzz around doctors and nurses. People without knowledge about medicine and whose only interest is a private company's benefit.
PaywallBuster 4y ago
> Hospitals over-bill persistently and excessively to the point where hospital billing charges have ceased to have much meaning beyond their ability to shock and frighten people. The > While Medicare and Medicaid control their costs by tying their payments to the actual cost of medical services, private insurance companies appear to be just paying a fixed percentage of what they’re billed. That alone gives hospitals a strong motivation to inflate their billing charges by more each year independent of their costs.
- geoduck14 4y ago
  Medicare isn't that great, too. My wife worked health care and Medicare patients were difficult because of the weird paperwork
- lr4444lr 4y ago
  Very few medical practices or hospitals can survive solely on patients paying Medicare rates.
thr0wawayf00 4y ago
As long as the public isn't interested in seriously considering alternative systems like Medicare for All, nothing is going to change. There's a reason that private equity has consumed our healthcare sector: it's incredibly lucrative and inherently disadvantages both the patient and provider through vast amounts of process. Pretty much every healthcare startup in the US is just trying to figure out how to insert itself into this endless bureaucracy and draw money out of the system while trying to add value in some way.
- confidantlake 4y ago
  Value optional.
- gedy 4y ago
  Thing is, we didn't have socialized medicine in say the 1970s, and I don't remember things being this bad or regulated. What happened?
  - Epa095 4y ago
    Maybe just "time" happened? It takes time for the rot to properly develop.
    - pooper 4y ago
      » Thing is, we didn't have socialized medicine in say the 1970s, and I don't remember things being this bad or regulated. What happened? Or even more simply, we grew up. I was born in the late eighties. I was simply too young to understand that the civil war was not about states' rights. It was about slavery. I thought adults knew everything and as I became an adult I realized I knew nothing. That or a lot of what was previously swept under the carpet or dog whistled is now out in the open. Back to the topic though, I agree with you Probably the easiest explanation is healthcare is now a bigger slice of a bigger pie about 20% of a USD 20T GDP iirc. There is simply too much money to be made here. There is only so much investment opportunity that has any good return so smart money will chase anything that resembles guaranteed returns. Thoughts?
amelius 4y ago
It's a shame that the Hippocratic oath didn't contain the sentence "I shall not overcharge my clients or bring them in financial jeopardy".
- UnpossibleJim 4y ago
  It isn't doctors who do this. Doctors, by and large, would love to just treat people. And while doctors do make quite a bit compared to other countries [1], the litigious nature of the American patient and the high cost of education make these wages almost a necessity in order to pay off insurance and student loans =[ https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/080615/6-reasons-healthcare-so-expensive-us.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/08061...
  - epistasis 4y ago
    Doctors are also very self-interested and want to advance their careers. So if the top surgeons at a hospital want the newest, most expensive toys, and will leave for another hospital unless they get them, it might be that the hospital administrators buy unnecessary machines just to keep their best people around, at the cost of increased bills for everyone. In this story, the surgeons may not be explicitly greedy, but the system sets them up to cost everyone quite a bit.
  - bradleyjg 4y ago
    How true is that really? What’s the difference in lifetime earnings between a UK and US orthopedic surgeon net of insurance and loan payments? My sense is that the difference in pay dwarfs the difference in costs.
  - criddell 4y ago
    The AMA is a professional organization for doctors and they have opposed all kinds of changes designed to reduce medical costs because it would hurt their members’ bottom line. The system is a racket and doctors are in on it.
    - 4y ago
bradleyjg 4y ago
Covering their costs is a bs framework. Hospitals are de facto partnerships run for the benefit of certain insider employees. Their “costs” are whatever the market will bear paid to those same employees. Ditto for universities.
- vinyl7 4y ago
  Universities get away with absurd pricing because the government guarantees the loans. If the govt stopped backing the loans, the tuition costs would plummet and the govt wouldn't need to back them anyway.
robin_reala 4y ago
They don’t have to play this game. For reference, see most other countries who have taken the slightly more enlightened step of a socialised healthcare system.
- Chris2048 4y ago
  It's kind of useless to say this an not name at least one such country. Notably, many of the places with "better" healthcare aren't obviously sustainable e.g. France.
- thriftwy 4y ago
  It's not just the social medicine. It's totally possible to go to a private hospital in other countries and get a reasonable final quote before any procedure is done.
markus_zhang 4y ago
This is the nature of the US society.
joe_the_user 4y ago
People blame the hospitals but this the game they have to play in order to cover their costs... If you do things that literally ruin people's live, I don't care if you "have to do it" to keep your business going. As to lawyers, in a society with money and contracts, these exist. What I would hope for would be a statue with in the case of the abusive billing, the victim can sue for ten times the amount of the bill, just for starters.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
planetsprite 4y ago
This is true. Capitalism is at it's best when it manageably distributes supply and demand forces in a minimal surface, maximizing net utility via the price level and transactions. It's at its worst when those at one side of the transactions (healthcare buyers) are systematically denied information and held hostage via contracts. The American healthcare system operates on this, and it's such a valuable tactic that it's worth more to waste resources on managing this degree of litigation than just charge reasonable amounts. In more cases on average, the healthcare providers must be making a net profit via these tactics, otherwise they wouldn't do it. The fact that this tactic is even theoretically profitable means the system is fundamentally broken.
nobodyandproud 4y ago
Your own link disagrees with your conclusion.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
TomSwirly 4y ago
> this the game they have to play in order to cover their costs Another possibility - cut back on the 20% that goes to executive salaries: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2785479 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2785479 Or cut down on these guys: https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/compensation-issues/18-highest-paid-ceos-in-healthcare.html https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/compensation-issues/18...

macintux 4y ago

I'd be curious how much money is spent each year on the bureaucracy of healthcare, from employees who do little besides manage health insurance, insurance company employees, billing specialists in medical establishments, etc, etc, etc.

ktzar 4y ago

Private medical services are a very profitable business for certain professions that buzz around doctors and nurses. People without knowledge about medicine and whose only interest is a private company's benefit.

PaywallBuster 4y ago

> Hospitals over-bill persistently and excessively to the point where hospital billing charges have ceased to have much meaning beyond their ability to shock and frighten people. The > While Medicare and Medicaid control their costs by tying their payments to the actual cost of medical services, private insurance companies appear to be just paying a fixed percentage of what they’re billed. That alone gives hospitals a strong motivation to inflate their billing charges by more each year independent of their costs.

geoduck14 4y ago
Medicare isn't that great, too. My wife worked health care and Medicare patients were difficult because of the weird paperwork
lr4444lr 4y ago
Very few medical practices or hospitals can survive solely on patients paying Medicare rates.

thr0wawayf00 4y ago

As long as the public isn't interested in seriously considering alternative systems like Medicare for All, nothing is going to change. There's a reason that private equity has consumed our healthcare sector: it's incredibly lucrative and inherently disadvantages both the patient and provider through vast amounts of process. Pretty much every healthcare startup in the US is just trying to figure out how to insert itself into this endless bureaucracy and draw money out of the system while trying to add value in some way.

confidantlake 4y ago
Value optional.
gedy 4y ago
Thing is, we didn't have socialized medicine in say the 1970s, and I don't remember things being this bad or regulated. What happened?
- Epa095 4y ago
  Maybe just "time" happened? It takes time for the rot to properly develop.
  - pooper 4y ago
    » Thing is, we didn't have socialized medicine in say the 1970s, and I don't remember things being this bad or regulated. What happened? Or even more simply, we grew up. I was born in the late eighties. I was simply too young to understand that the civil war was not about states' rights. It was about slavery. I thought adults knew everything and as I became an adult I realized I knew nothing. That or a lot of what was previously swept under the carpet or dog whistled is now out in the open. Back to the topic though, I agree with you Probably the easiest explanation is healthcare is now a bigger slice of a bigger pie about 20% of a USD 20T GDP iirc. There is simply too much money to be made here. There is only so much investment opportunity that has any good return so smart money will chase anything that resembles guaranteed returns. Thoughts?

amelius 4y ago

It's a shame that the Hippocratic oath didn't contain the sentence "I shall not overcharge my clients or bring them in financial jeopardy".

UnpossibleJim 4y ago
It isn't doctors who do this. Doctors, by and large, would love to just treat people. And while doctors do make quite a bit compared to other countries [1], the litigious nature of the American patient and the high cost of education make these wages almost a necessity in order to pay off insurance and student loans =[ https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/080615/6-reasons-healthcare-so-expensive-us.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/08061...
- epistasis 4y ago
  Doctors are also very self-interested and want to advance their careers. So if the top surgeons at a hospital want the newest, most expensive toys, and will leave for another hospital unless they get them, it might be that the hospital administrators buy unnecessary machines just to keep their best people around, at the cost of increased bills for everyone. In this story, the surgeons may not be explicitly greedy, but the system sets them up to cost everyone quite a bit.
- bradleyjg 4y ago
  How true is that really? What’s the difference in lifetime earnings between a UK and US orthopedic surgeon net of insurance and loan payments? My sense is that the difference in pay dwarfs the difference in costs.
- criddell 4y ago
  The AMA is a professional organization for doctors and they have opposed all kinds of changes designed to reduce medical costs because it would hurt their members’ bottom line. The system is a racket and doctors are in on it.
  - 4y ago

bradleyjg 4y ago

Covering their costs is a bs framework. Hospitals are de facto partnerships run for the benefit of certain insider employees. Their “costs” are whatever the market will bear paid to those same employees. Ditto for universities.

vinyl7 4y ago
Universities get away with absurd pricing because the government guarantees the loans. If the govt stopped backing the loans, the tuition costs would plummet and the govt wouldn't need to back them anyway.

robin_reala 4y ago

They don’t have to play this game. For reference, see most other countries who have taken the slightly more enlightened step of a socialised healthcare system.

Chris2048 4y ago
It's kind of useless to say this an not name at least one such country. Notably, many of the places with "better" healthcare aren't obviously sustainable e.g. France.
thriftwy 4y ago
It's not just the social medicine. It's totally possible to go to a private hospital in other countries and get a reasonable final quote before any procedure is done.

markus_zhang 4y ago

This is the nature of the US society.

joe_the_user 4y ago

People blame the hospitals but this the game they have to play in order to cover their costs... If you do things that literally ruin people's live, I don't care if you "have to do it" to keep your business going. As to lawyers, in a society with money and contracts, these exist. What I would hope for would be a statue with in the case of the abusive billing, the victim can sue for ten times the amount of the bill, just for starters.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

planetsprite 4y ago

This is true. Capitalism is at it's best when it manageably distributes supply and demand forces in a minimal surface, maximizing net utility via the price level and transactions. It's at its worst when those at one side of the transactions (healthcare buyers) are systematically denied information and held hostage via contracts. The American healthcare system operates on this, and it's such a valuable tactic that it's worth more to waste resources on managing this degree of litigation than just charge reasonable amounts. In more cases on average, the healthcare providers must be making a net profit via these tactics, otherwise they wouldn't do it. The fact that this tactic is even theoretically profitable means the system is fundamentally broken.

nobodyandproud 4y ago

Your own link disagrees with your conclusion.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

TomSwirly 4y ago

> this the game they have to play in order to cover their costs Another possibility - cut back on the 20% that goes to executive salaries: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2785479 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2785479 Or cut down on these guys: https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/compensation-issues/18-highest-paid-ceos-in-healthcare.html https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/compensation-issues/18...