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Step 1 should be “every health plan is a high deductible health plan.” Step 2 should be “Absolute price transparency.” We need to make patients cost-sensitive
by Auracle 4y ago
Step 1 should be “every health plan is a high deductible health plan.”
Step 2 should be “Absolute price transparency.”
We need to make patients cost-sensitive. It’s utterly ridiculous that there’s a pill to treat low testosterone that’s $1,000 a month when a weekly injection costs $20 a month. Sure, taking a pill is easier and less painful. 99.9% of people would still choose the needle if they actually had to pay for it - and that would mean the manufacturer of the pills would have to lower the cost.
The same thing goes for many other medications and treatments. Why bother trying to price out that MRI if you’re hitting your deductible either way? Not like they’d tell you the cost up front anyways.
- mrtranscendence 4y agoSwitching everyone to a high-deductible would be disastrous for people with expensive chronic conditions like diabetes. It would force people to forgo treatment or select suboptimal treatment even in the absence of chronic conditions, leading to complications that require further treatment down the line. Not a fan of this idea.
- Auracle 4y agoIdeally for the truly low income there would be subsidies, but it’d have to be limited enough for them to still have skin in the game. The end point is that what are now expensive, chronic conditions would become much less expensive. There would be some pain in the interim. Frankly I’d be all for tying our drug prices to the prices in other countries. If I were king for a day I’d do both that and what I detailed above.