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Anyone who has insurance doesn't care about the price. They only care about the deductible. When people shop around, they look for the insurance companies that
by rsanchez1 15y ago
Anyone who has insurance doesn't care about the price. They only care about the deductible. When people shop around, they look for the insurance companies that provide the lowest deductibles and stick with them. After that, there's no pressure on the providers to lower prices. The insurance companies in the US don't negotiate lower prices, they just pass on the cost to policy holders in their deductibles. The providers can increase the price without fearing that patients will go to a different clinic or buy a different generic version of their drug. Medical care in the US is one of the only industries where raising the price can get your more customers, since it makes the government push for universal health insurance to keep deductibles low.
There are a few solutions, two of which were mentioned in the article. The insurance companies can negotiate prices with providers, or the government can set the price. A third option is to let the patients themselves set the price by having them shop around. The patients would put pressures on the providers by going where they can get the cheapest MRI or the cheapest Lipitor. Then insurance would be reserved for emergency procedures, instead of being used as a medical credit card.
- Vivtek 15y agoI've heard this before. Do you think that Germans or the French end users care about the price? No - they're insured far better than any American without a (D) or (R) after their name. They just _go to the doctor when they're sick_. Period.
- yummyfajitas 15y agoSo France and Germany have some non-price rationing mechanism. Whatever mechanism they have, it causes them to half less than half as many MRI's (per capita) than the US. http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/download/fulltext/8111101ec030.pdf?expires=1330842805&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=326DE1604FB53303F3F1E0EA2AC5C3D3 http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/download/fulltext/811...
- Cass 15y agoMRIs in Germany (or at least my part of it) tend to be relatively rare and booked almost completely full, because with the prices the way they are, they're not profitable unless they're utilized as much as physically possible. There's therefore usually a waiting period of a few days for a non-emergency MRI, which tends to make them a less attractive option for doctors and patients than they might be if they were instantly available. On top of that, they're still relatively pricy compared to other diagnostic procedures, and in Germany, a doctor or hospital who prescribes too many expensive procedures may get personally stuck with the cost, instead of being able to pass them on to the patient or insurer.
- danmaz74 15y agoJust how many of those MRIs in the US are done without insurance or medicare - ie, are subjected to price rationing mechanisms? Moreover, in a system like the US health care the "average" isn't very meaningful, because if you and I have a sore knee, and you get 2 MRIs per year, and I get none, well...
- jrwoodruff 15y agoI don't know about you, but next time I need an emergency room or surgical procedure, I'm not going to be shopping for the cheapest one. The article addressed this - how do you 'shop around' when you're under anesthesia, and would you really hire the cheapest doctor to diagnose your daughters life threatening ailment? It just doesn't play out in reality.
- davidhollander 15y agoYes, most agree that security against unexpected and unpredictable costs, such as emergency room visits and catastrophic illness, is the proper role of insurance. However, for drugs, chronic treatment, and preventative procedures, costs would much lower if consumers were allowed to shop around and haggle prices without going through insurance. This is why you see certain operations like Lasik, which are elective and not covered by anyone's insurance, becoming highly roboticized and deflating in cost rather than inflating. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WnS96NVlMI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WnS96NVlMI
- mark_up 15y agoNext time, read the comment you decide to respond to it. He clearly says that one would shop around only for non-emergency procedures.
- yummyfajitas 15y agoMost medical procedures are not emergent. It's hard to shop around for emergency care, but shopping around for everything else is pretty straightforward. We have strong experimental evidence that when people are not insulated from price, they shop around and consume less medicine with no measurable effect on their health. http://www.rand.org/health/projects/hie.html http://www.rand.org/health/projects/hie.html
- mikebike 15y agoThis article suggests that shopping around for, say, knee replacement surgery, is not so simple: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/how-much-is-that-surgery-in-the-window/2011/10/25/gIQAsdZaGM_blog.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/how-much...
- tibbon 15y agoYou make a good point, in that the end users in the US just care about the deductible. Part of this is that its hard (if not impossible) to find out what something will cost. The doctors don't (or rarely) know the cost, and it just isn't in the standard vocabulary of patients to inquire the cost and/or shop around.
- phreanix 15y ago"The insurance companies in the US don't negotiate lower prices, they just pass on the cost to policy holders in their deductibles." I'm sorry, this is wrong. The insurance companies actually DO negotiate lower prices. I recently had surgery and through my billing statements watched as first the hospital attempted to charge an obscene amount (that would have bankrupted me several times over had I not had insurance), then having my insurance company go through every line in the bill to let them know the max amt they will pay for each service provided. This was recently Reported on, I'll try and find the article.