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The idea that either hospitals or insurance companies are single handedly to blame for the mess that is the US healthcare market is naïve. You can't have a nor
by rjtavares 3y ago
The idea that either hospitals or insurance companies are single handedly to blame for the mess that is the US healthcare market is naïve.
You can't have a normal billing process when the buyer can't decide what they want.
The problem is: a person can't decide the best treatment for their disease. The extreme case: a person that goes through a surgery cannot decide what care they need or want (they are under anesthesia when that decision needs to be made).
So, someone else needs to manage the cost, not the end customer. Who? Insurance passes the cost to the customer, and companies buying health insurance can't really decide on the care needed by their employees.
That leaves the government to be an effective regulator of cost. The US decided they don't want that.
Fix that before anything else.
- BadCookie 3y agoMaybe what you are saying is true in emergency medicine, but it’s very easy to rack up thousands per year in non-emergency medical care. If someone’s doctor orders, say, an echocardiogram or an MRI done, typically that patient is going to wait several weeks before getting the imaging done. But how easy is it to price compare for that sort of thing? Not easy at all. Most patients will go to whichever hospital their doctor sent them to, and the doctor has no idea which hospital offers the best deal (partly because the price depends on someone’s insurance plan)!
- rjtavares 3y agoYou will go to whichever hospital your doctor sent you in any case... The idea that price shopping in important is healthcare is completely unproven worldwide, as far as I know.