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The one item missing here is a hot-topic of mine: emergency care. Not only are emergency services as expensive as the rest of medicine, but worse than that is
by pragone 15y ago
The one item missing here is a hot-topic of mine: emergency care. Not only are emergency services as expensive as the rest of medicine, but worse than that is the providers have a legal responsibility to care for the individual, who in turn has zero responsibility to actually pay the bill.
The other missing factor is that in a lot of cases, medicare/medicaid don't actually cover the actual cost of the procedure/service being provided; this leads providers and practitioners to charge more for those with better insurance in order to keep their businesses afloat.
- wtvanhest 15y agoworse than that Are you saying poor people should just die when they are injured? The emergency situation is the only time it should be reasonable for Dr.s to not have to provide webbased standard billing.
- pragone 15y agoNot at all. I'm just pointing out how screwed up the system is that the government requires practitioners to treat people but doesn't provide the financial resources to pay for it. I've worked in systems that basically were bankrupt repeatedly because they kept providing the services they couldn't afford. My point isn't that the providers shouldn't be legally required to provide the care (the truth is we would and do anyway); rather, something needs to be done about how costs are distributed in order to prevent hospitals, clinics, urgent cares and 911 services from going out of business.
- pradocchia 15y agoThe emergency care trope gets repeated frequently, but the truth of the matter is that hospitals over-allocate costs to the ER, and then overcharge for ER services, and then write off the inflated charges, all to game statutory reporting requirements. So what the public sees as loss-leading ER services pushing up costs for everyone is actually an accounting gimmick. The true costs lay elsewhere.