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Number one is full price transparency of the whole chain. I work for a medical device company and even the marketing people can't really tell what our stuff cos

Number one is full price transparency of the whole chain. I work for a medical device company and even the marketing people can't really tell what our stuff costs. There are a ton of middlemen with obscure contracts and very high markups. My ex got one of our devices and I was told by our people that the hospital should have received the device for between 20k-30k (nobody seems to really know) and the hospital charged 80k for the device alone. They also charged another 200k for a one hour surgery with a total hospital stay of six hours. It's also hard to explain that US patients pay a multiple of the drug price people in other parts of the world pay for the something. The problem is that if the US wastes 10% of GDP on health care inefficiencies this creates a huge lobby that will fight tooth and mail to keep that money.

t0mas88 4y ago
The prices as charged in the US regularly make it onto Twitter and Reddit etc where us Europeans wonder how on earth it's possible that something in the US costs $ 800 which is charged at less than $ 100 over here (and then paid by insurance). Same for that $ 30k device being sold for $ 80k. What we all forget is that nobody is actually paying the US healthcare invoices. Roughly two options... 1. You have insurance and they negotiated a different (much lower) rate or 2. you don't have insurance and can't pay the amount on the invoice. In option 2 you either declare bankruptcy and they get nothing or they sell the claim for something like 20% of the invoice to a collections agency.
- spaetzleesser 4y ago
  Not correct. The insurance paid 80k for the device and 300k total for the surgery after one year of fighting almost daily. Also: if you make a certain amount of money and they hit you with a 100k bill you can't just declare bankruptcy. The court won't allow you to do it because you make too much money.
  - e_i_pi_2 4y ago
    > you can't just declare bankruptcy. The court won't allow you to do it because you make too much money Isn't this always the case? My understanding was that bankruptcy is for when you don't have enough income to pay bills, so if you have a bill for any amount but are able to pay it then you wouldn't be allowed to declare bankruptcy

t0mas88 4y ago

The prices as charged in the US regularly make it onto Twitter and Reddit etc where us Europeans wonder how on earth it's possible that something in the US costs $ 800 which is charged at less than $ 100 over here (and then paid by insurance). Same for that $ 30k device being sold for $ 80k. What we all forget is that nobody is actually paying the US healthcare invoices. Roughly two options... 1. You have insurance and they negotiated a different (much lower) rate or 2. you don't have insurance and can't pay the amount on the invoice. In option 2 you either declare bankruptcy and they get nothing or they sell the claim for something like 20% of the invoice to a collections agency.

spaetzleesser 4y ago
Not correct. The insurance paid 80k for the device and 300k total for the surgery after one year of fighting almost daily. Also: if you make a certain amount of money and they hit you with a 100k bill you can't just declare bankruptcy. The court won't allow you to do it because you make too much money.
- e_i_pi_2 4y ago
  > you can't just declare bankruptcy. The court won't allow you to do it because you make too much money Isn't this always the case? My understanding was that bankruptcy is for when you don't have enough income to pay bills, so if you have a bill for any amount but are able to pay it then you wouldn't be allowed to declare bankruptcy