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Toddler's backyard snake bite bills totaled more than a quarter-million dollars
- impish9208 2y agoPreviously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42013478 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42013478
- vundercind 2y agoIf you’re wondering what the national cost of delivering an average of 18 doses (article’s figure) of this stuff, sans other expenses, at the rate paid per dose in this case, is against the low-side estimate of 7,000 venomous snake bites, it’s about $900,000,000/yr. [edit] Well actually 18 is the median, so technically the figure could be way higher or way lower than that. Probably a decent ballpark figure, still.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- bell-cot 2y agoFor profit-driven "health care" org's, Pay Or Die products with a natural monopoly are the Holy Grail.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoNo one is stopping government leaders from spending money to develop, trial, manufacture, and sell medicine. Yet not a single candidate campaigns on this initiative. Also, patents are not a “natural” monopoly.
- vundercind 2y agoThe article makes it clear the crazy-high rates for these drugs aren't because of the price hospitals pay for the drugs, but hospital mark-up.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoDoes the medicine expire quickly? Or does the cost of storing it/administer it differ from other medicine? Hospital profit margins don’t seem particularly high (~10%). https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/HCA/hca-healthcare/profit-margins https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/HCA/hca-healthcare... The other publicly listed company I could find is Tenet, which doesn’t do so well: https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/THC/tenet-healthcare/profit-margins https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/THC/tenet-healthca... > Why the high price? One explanation is that hospitals can — and do — mark up products to balance overhead costs and generate revenue. This is something all businesses do. Some products/services are sold at higher margin than other products/services, for a variety of reasons. Edit: CHS is the other large publicly listed hospital company, also has very low profit margins. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CHSCP/chs-inc/profit-margins https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/CHSCP/chs-inc/prof...
- burnt-resistor 2y agoMore and more hospitals are owned by for-profit corporations that own many rather than administered by municipalities and non-profits. They're all about profits, rarely outcomes, as the evidence shows.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoThis doesn’t seem to be true, at least as of 2013: https://www.statista.com/statistics/824788/total-number-of-for-profit-hospitals-in-the-us/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/824788/total-number-of-f... The numbers seem like they trend downwards, with 1,219 in 2024. https://www.aha.org/system/files/media/file/2024/01/fast-facts-on-us-hospitals-2024-20240112.pdf https://www.aha.org/system/files/media/file/2024/01/fast-fac... The two hospitals in the linked article are government owned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palomar_Health https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palomar_Health https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rady_Children%27s_Hospital https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rady_Children%27s_Hospital
- burnt-resistor 2y ago
- nancybelowzero 2y agoWhat do you mean "no one is stopping"? The "ones stopping" are lobbiests and their associated bribes.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoThey can try to influence, but they are not successful all the time. I would bet the American public does not have the stomach for government spending on risky trials that more often than not fail to result in a medicine. I don’t think any government in the world does.
- deprecative 2y agoThe US government does most of the hard work on medicine. Pharma takes over from there. It's quite literally privatizing the successes and tax payer funded failures.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoIf that was true, then it should be a slam dunk for a party to win elections on reducing the cost of medicine by obviating pharmaceutical companies, the businesses with the highest or second highest profit margin in the healthcare delivery chain. I assume healthcare software (like Epic) perhaps has higher profit margins. However, I suspect the reality is that the clinical trials cost a ton of money and politicians don’t want to be associated with the failures.
- r00fus 2y agoYou don't think that Pharma and Insurance aren't paying off both sides? That's rule number 1 in lobbying - you work both sides.
- juliangoldsmith 2y agoThe title is somewhat misleading, since it implies the family paid that much. From near the bottom of the article: >Brigland’s family paid $7,200, their plan’s out-of-pocket maximum.
- vundercind 2y agoPlus have been billed another $11,000 for an ambulance that insurance decided not to cover.
- burnt-resistor 2y agoSurprise! Gotcha capitalism and unexpected risk of bankruptcy, homelessness, and poverty is America's defining feature that's not a bug.
- vundercind 2y agoJudging from the photos I’m guessing these folks can take the hit and at least be OK, if not somewhat scuffed-up, financially speaking, but almost $20k in medical bills because your kid had one could-happen-to-anyone mishap would ruin a lot of families’ entire decade. It remains baffling to me that almost any other topic gets attention in this country when we have this problem.
- burnt-resistor 2y agoOf course, because us poor people don't have access to journalists or large social media presences. The burden for most families falls on them and nonexistent, power-law distribution ad-hoc charity drives like GoFundMe that are more like the lottery rather than receiving a consistent amount of help comparable to their condition. The whole point of society is to share risks and costs that would be difficult or impossible to share alone. When a society doesn't do that, it becomes a degree of a failed state by definition. Anything shared today in America is privatized, eliminated, or disparaged as "communism" by the ignorati and by the greedy rich.
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- aaron695 2y ago[dead]
- burnt-resistor 2y agoWelcome to America! (Also don't sign-up for Medicare Advantage because it has lifetime limits.)
- ThePowerOfFuet 2y agoIt's wild to see people in this thread defending that the family "only" had to pay either $7K (or $18K with the ambulance). Stockholm syndrome at its finest.