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US hospitals have to start posting their prices online


Starkiller

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https://qz.com/1509095/hospital-to-post-the-costs-of-medical-services/

 

Astronomical hospital bills are a trope of American health care. Hospitals in the US are known for charging exorbitant fees for simple procedures, and for adding baffling entries to discharge bills. Notorious examples include the woman who was charged $40 to hold her newborn, and the $18,000 emergency-rom bill that a family received after their baby was “treated” with some milk and a nap.

 

The surprise factor, at least, may soon be changing. On Jan. 1, a new regulation takes effect requiring hospitals to post the prices of their services online. Announced by health and human services secretary Alex Azar in April, the provision is called Inpatient Prospective Payment System rule. Under it, hospitals will have to share the prices of standard services online, as well as make medical records more easily accessible by patients themselves, and shareable between medical practices.

 

Though hospitals are already required to make their prices available in some form, and to allow patients to access their medical records, the new rule aims to simplify both and increase overall transparency. Starting next year, Medicare reimbursements will be based in part on the quality of an institution’s information-sharing and accessibility.

 

In April, Azar said he believed the regulation will enable market competition and bring down costs by putting “patients in charge of their care and [allowing] them to receive the quality and price information needed to drive competition and increase value.”

 

The idea that competition will take care of America’s health care costs has often been pushed by conservatives, but the new regulation does nothing to set or limit prices themselves. Patients will be hard pressed to discern whether a hospital’s price is fair, and listed prices won’t be indicative of what’s covered by insurance.

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Mostly a good thing. But....

 

Where people miss the boat on some price structures is the apples to oranges issue.  For example:

You see the bill for $50 for a couple Tylenol.  And you think, if I bought those Tylenol at Walgreen's it's under a buck.  But, that's wrong. Because you're not really paying $50 for 2 Tylenol.  You're paying for the 5 dings on the hospital bed and the time for the nurses to come check on you, take care of what you need, to make records of what they gave you so the hospital doesn't get sued and some other nurse/admin to enter all those (and another to generate the bill - yes, you need to be billed for getting billed).  

 

If someone calls me at 2am and says I need a cucumber (don't ask why) and I drive an hour to bring it to their house and then they wonder why it costs $100 not $4, they're missing the point.  

 

That being said, hospital billing is of course based on the old standard of What The Market Will Bear and as such so many numbers have been pushed so far out of whack to the point they're not considered to be "within normal range" it's incredible.  A few years back I recall seeing the full blown normal cost (before insurance) of an MRI in the US vs Switzerland and Japan - two of the most expensive countries in the world.  And we were on average 10X greater the cost.  

 

I got no perfect solutions*, but we all know health care costs in the US are fundamentally FUBAR.

 

 

(* I have universal coverage suggestions that would appease/piss off both sides, but not the actual nuts and bolts costs)

 

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I think this is a step in the right direction.  We have to simplify the system and make it easier for everyone to use.  Cut down the red tape and administration stuff which could actually help lower costs.  It also improves competition if prices are easily seen and compared.  Right now it's a free market with zero competition.  The worst of both worlds.  

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It’s better than nothing, but it won’t do much to create competition. Hospitals generally don’t compete on cost. And it’s not as if most people have lots of options when they need to go to a hospital. It’s not a traditional free market product. 

 

And certainly in the case of an emergency you don’t have time to price shop. You go wherever is closest. You can’t negotiate better prices in the middle of a heart attack. 

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Good. I was recently talking to my moms brother in law who is from Spain and has lived all over the world. He said that by far the United States has the worst healthcare and insurance prices in the world and this seems to be the only country where you are forced to get insurance that’s expensive and when you actually have to use it they penalize you by raising the price. He was dumbfounded at how Ass backwards our system was compared to the rest of the world. 

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Healthcare is not a consumer driven industry.  Anything that pushes us in this direction is a good thing.

 

I despise this admin for a lot of reasons, but I'm on board with most everything that Azar and Seema are pushing...most of it is just a continuation of Obama policies and has bipartisan support.

 

(Everything except repeal/replace that is)

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Other countries control costs directly. We are going to need Medicare to enforce price controls on procedure and drug costs and either private insurers will need to follow suit or everyone needs to have Medicare. 

 

America needs to stop treating healthcare as a traditional for-profit industry for anything to change. 

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On 12/27/2018 at 11:55 PM, chef said:

If someone calls me at 2am and says I need a cucumber (don't ask why) and I drive an hour to bring it to their house and then they wonder why it costs $100 not $4, they're missing the point.  

This has so much potential I can’t decide where to begin...

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3 hours ago, Legaltitan said:

Its funny cuz cucumbers are shaped like a penis 

I thought the 2 am part was fun.  And if you knew more about my job, that comment would make way more sense in context.

 

Always used to play that game in line at Costco, grocery stores, where you try to work all the stuff from the person in front of you's order into an assembled group, hopefully humorous. 

 

One time a few years back at Costco Maui, there was a middle aged woman with - keep in mind Costco sizes:

* a bag of long Asian eggplant

* jumbo size KY

* Depends

* 36 ct toliet paper

* a box of chocolates

 

 

I pretty decided to call it quits right there while I was ahead.

 

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