4 ms·

One conjecture he made is definitely wrong. Medical bills for uninsured individuals are usually higher than those for insured (due to insurance companies negot

One conjecture he made is definitely wrong. Medical bills for uninsured individuals are usually higher than those for insured (due to insurance companies negotiating a better price).

Dylan16807 14y ago
For any particular place that that holds, I can almost guarantee its purpose is negotiating with insurance. Take away the insured and the price will drop tremendously as there is no need for extreme fake discounts.
- talmand 14y ago
  I once had a scan done and the office offered a cash price that was lower than the deductible, but if I went through insurance they would have billed higher so that most likely I would have had to pay the entire deductible. I paid cash.
  - kdot 14y ago
    Thats THE problem with healthcare in the US, there are 4 market prices: - Actual Price - Cash Price (after you bitch about how absurd the actual price is) - Insurance Company price - Medicaid price I wonder if the US can ever get as low as $20/mo for cadillac coverage. Is the free-market model even applicable to health care?
    - VLM 14y ago
      "Is the free-market model even applicable to health care?" It works about as well applied to health care, as applied to police coverage, military defense, restaurant health inspections, road maintenance, and education. Not as well as when applied to a farmers market or factory widget production. Its a little harder for med because quite a bit of med care happens to medically uneducated people. Given a couple years of med school and some on the job experience, and a couple days to fully research each emergency room and cardiology department in the country, my neighbor could probably have made an intelligent free market decision when he had his heart attack. However, instead of a free market, the ambulance instead took him unconscious to the nearest ER, where they'll pretty much do what they want and then charge what they want. The true miracle of the situation is it may have been a financial disaster, but medically it all turned out OK. Decades of propaganda has taught me that only a free market can provide decent services, yet at least medical care works pretty well with a feudal system where you simply report to the nearest castle and pay whatever tax the feudal lord demands.

One conjecture he made is definitely wrong. Medical bills for uninsured individuals are usually higher than those for insured (due to insurance companies negotiating a better price).

Dylan16807 14y ago

For any particular place that that holds, I can almost guarantee its purpose is negotiating with insurance. Take away the insured and the price will drop tremendously as there is no need for extreme fake discounts.

talmand 14y ago
I once had a scan done and the office offered a cash price that was lower than the deductible, but if I went through insurance they would have billed higher so that most likely I would have had to pay the entire deductible. I paid cash.
- kdot 14y ago
  Thats THE problem with healthcare in the US, there are 4 market prices: - Actual Price - Cash Price (after you bitch about how absurd the actual price is) - Insurance Company price - Medicaid price I wonder if the US can ever get as low as $20/mo for cadillac coverage. Is the free-market model even applicable to health care?
  - VLM 14y ago
    "Is the free-market model even applicable to health care?" It works about as well applied to health care, as applied to police coverage, military defense, restaurant health inspections, road maintenance, and education. Not as well as when applied to a farmers market or factory widget production. Its a little harder for med because quite a bit of med care happens to medically uneducated people. Given a couple years of med school and some on the job experience, and a couple days to fully research each emergency room and cardiology department in the country, my neighbor could probably have made an intelligent free market decision when he had his heart attack. However, instead of a free market, the ambulance instead took him unconscious to the nearest ER, where they'll pretty much do what they want and then charge what they want. The true miracle of the situation is it may have been a financial disaster, but medically it all turned out OK. Decades of propaganda has taught me that only a free market can provide decent services, yet at least medical care works pretty well with a feudal system where you simply report to the nearest castle and pay whatever tax the feudal lord demands.