Quote:
Originally Posted by out2kayak
Sorry for the rant, but here are my thoughts...
Actually, there are things that are much simpler to O'care and government purchased everything that could be done to fix the system.
The fundamental issue, in my humble estimation, is there are significant structural forces that have completely screwed up healthcare.
First and foremost - the consumer must have transparency to cost. How many times have you gone to have a procedure without any clue as to what it will cost and what your total out of pocket cost will be.
Imagine what would happen if you were having some work done on your car. You drive up to the mechanic and simply say "fix it". A time period later, you get your car back and everything is working. You drive away happy, because the thing that was broken is now fixed.
Over the course of the next six to twelve months you get random high dollar bills. One for the engine specialist. One for the body guy. One for the paint booth owner. ... and so on.
Now, imagine that the government passes laws saying that there are certain things on your car that you cannot have access to. It will cause your car to be dangerous, they say, to give to the general public. This includes things such as tires, brake pads, etc. You must go through your mechanic to have them install these, else you'll endanger everyone else on the road.
This is exactly what we have in healthcare. Imagine if the law required that, doctors and hospitals could charge whatever they wanted, but every single procedure they offer must have prices publicly listed and whatever price they post is what must be paid.
Imagine if people had access to the wide variety of drugs that today are only available to doctors. Instead of keeping people ignorant and must go to the doctors for prescription, drug makers must inform the population on the pros and cons of their offering.
Finally, imagine if there were real competition between doctors and hospitals. Consumer reports or similar would yearly compare, much the same way happens in the auto industry, cost / quality / overall value for different procedures.
O'care did none of these. Instead it made things far, far worse. People are much further abstracted from the whole of payer, provider and consumer process.
Sigh... Enough of a rant. Thanks for the indulgence.
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This is a great idea!
The other thing that just kills me <is that the wrong expression in a healthcare discussion?>.... if a procedure is "retail" $5,000 -- but they have an agreement with the insurance company where it only pays $2,000...... then that is the value of that procedure. Don't bill me $5,000 for it!! WTF
When I worked (pre WWI) - a store was not allowed to advertise something as being "on sale" -- or discounted from a price -- unless they could show that they actually had offered and had sales of that item at the higher price prior. Period. Otherwise the "sale price" was the price -- so stating that it was "on sale" was complete BS.
Why bill an uninsured person $5,000 when you're willing to do the procedure for only $2,000. You'd probably stand a better chance of collecting on the 2K bill than the 5K (or 50K - or 500K) bill.