Hospitals Hide Pricing Data From Search Results (beckershospitalreview.com) 158
According to a Wall Street Journal investigation, hospitals are blocking confidential prices from web searches with special coding embedded on their websites. It's problematic because pricing information for hospital services must be disclosed under a new federal price transparency rule that went into effect on Jan. 1. Becker's Hospital Review reports: The code prevents pages from appearing in searches, such as a hospital's name and prices, computer experts told the Journal. While the prices are still there, it requires clicking through multiple layers of pages to find them. "It's technically there, but good luck finding it," Chirag Shah, an associate computer professor at the University of Washington, told the Journal. "It's one thing not to optimize your site for searchability, it's another thing to tag it so it can't be searched. It's a clear indication of intentionality."
Hospitals burying their pricing data include those owned by HCA Healthcare and Universal Health Services as well as the University of Pennsylvania Health System, NYU Langone Health, Beaumont Health and Novant Health, according to the Journal. Penn Medicine, NYU Langone Health and Novant Health told the publication they used the blocking code to direct patients first to information they "considered more useful than raw pricing data," for which they included web links. UHS uses the blocking code to ensure consumers acknowledge a disclosure statement before viewing prices and is making no effort to hide information, a hospital spokesperson told the Journal.
After the Journal reached out to hospitals about its discovery, the search-blocking code was removed from sites including those of HCA, Penn Medicine, Beaumont, Avera Health, Ballad Health and Northern Light Health. An HCA spokesperson told the publication the search blocker was "a legacy code that we removed," and Avera, Ballad, Beaumont and Northern Light said the code had been left on their websites by mistake.
Hospitals burying their pricing data include those owned by HCA Healthcare and Universal Health Services as well as the University of Pennsylvania Health System, NYU Langone Health, Beaumont Health and Novant Health, according to the Journal. Penn Medicine, NYU Langone Health and Novant Health told the publication they used the blocking code to direct patients first to information they "considered more useful than raw pricing data," for which they included web links. UHS uses the blocking code to ensure consumers acknowledge a disclosure statement before viewing prices and is making no effort to hide information, a hospital spokesperson told the Journal.
After the Journal reached out to hospitals about its discovery, the search-blocking code was removed from sites including those of HCA, Penn Medicine, Beaumont, Avera Health, Ballad Health and Northern Light Health. An HCA spokesperson told the publication the search blocker was "a legacy code that we removed," and Avera, Ballad, Beaumont and Northern Light said the code had been left on their websites by mistake.
C Suite needs to go to jail for this kind of stuff (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:C Suite needs to go to jail for this kind of st (Score:5, Interesting)
No more ignorance. You pull this shit, you go to jail.
Nope.
Nice fantasy though.
You steal a pack of gum, you go to jail. (Well, probably not if it’s your first offense but the possibility is there)
Criminal Law, that which has cage time as a penalty, only applies to laws that YOU break.
If you’re a corporation, your transgressions are covered by Civil Law, rarely with cage time as a punishment.,
So, steal a $1.00 item from Walmart? Criminal Law. Possible incarceration. Good luck getting a job or an apartment after that.
Intentionally overbill 10 million people netting billions in ill-gotten gains? No incarceration threat. Home ownership assured. Job offers pour in. Just pay off the large yet token-to-your-company “fine”, and you can do it as often as you’d like.
Welcome to the USA.
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I can't make heads or tails of what you wrote enough to decide whether I agree with you. I think I do, but...?
Opportunity for a website to track all the prices. (Score:2)
Some sort of aggregator site.
Robots.txt? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Robots.txt? (Score:4, Interesting)
If you look up their robot txt on wayback, the first couple health networks listed have no changes as far back as 2019.
HCA interestingly had no robots txt before 2019.
The first four I checked do contain only disallow lines
I was going to link them but slashdot thinks a URL is ascii art and rejects my post.
I'm sure you can look them up easily enough.
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Tried them both ways. It seems any valid https url ending with 'slash robots dot txt' is being outright rejected, even from preview.
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really? [hcahealthcare.com]
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Slashdot must just hate me
Tried with that exact same link
https://imgur.com/7oL5PdC [imgur.com]
Yet this image link it is fine with, and it doesn't mind when I add a space
https://hcahealthcare.com/ [hcahealthcare.com] robots.txt
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With both, you are putting your URL between the quotes instead of words. Put words between the anchor tag and just put the URL only in the attribute of the tag.
NO <a href="[url here]">[url also here]</a>
YES <a href="[url here]">just words here</a>
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''I was going to link them but slashdot thinks a URL is ascii art and rejects my post.''
It's not just the posting of URLs that it sees as SPAM, I've seen it too frequently lately. Someone has been doing some fuckery designed to eliminate the normal spam. What ever codebase changes they've made have made this an issue for me many times, requiring me to re and rededit posts. So whatever they were attempting to improve was done with shitty code.
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Do the prices mean anything? This is the US healthcare system: Standard practice is to massively over-charge for everything, then offer equally massive discounts negotiated with insurance providers. So unless you are some sucker who didn't buy or couldn't get health insurance, the sticker price is meaningless.
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It means a lot ot those people, don't you think?
Granted, Obamacare/RomneyCare fixed a lot of the issues, but there's still a bunch of people who don't have it, and they're forced to pay full freight.
And if you want real scum, air ambulances are not covered by anyone. And they charge a crap load of money for what they provide - often unnecessarily. And the air ambulance providers do it on purpose b
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Really?
I contract and pay my own medical insurance.
Obamacare caused my rates to skyrocket....it was quite reasonable in the past, but after OC...it immediately skyrocketed my rates and they kept going up year after year, often with somewhat less coverage.
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The catch is, as soon as you got to a point where you really needed it, they would have dumped you as they did to so many. Sometimes even retroactively. Or in many cases it would turn out to be cheap because they disallow everything.
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Yep, that's what we need to go back to mostly....I remember when your medical insurance used to be called "Major Medical", it was insurance against catastrophic health emergencies...like a heart attack, etc.
You had lower premiums, since it was for emergencies, you know...what insurance is supposed to be for, ie auto insurance.
They could go ba
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Do the prices mean anything?
Yes, you can refuse to pay more than what they list and have a reasonable chance to succeed in courts. So yes, they mean a lot.
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Haha sometimes its even more crazy than that. I had a procedure done last year, and the amount I was supposed to pay with my insurance 'discount' was several times what I had assumed the procedure would take... I would have owed around $1000 for a 25 minute office visit, whereas most information I found previous to the visit indicated typical price was $150-300, depending on insurance.
So I called the hospital to see what was up, and after a bunch of back-and-forth, they notified me that the 'non-insured' co
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Oh definitely, it makes total sense from the perspective of the hospital. Just another example of how insurance companies are a parasite on the medical system in the US.
yes, fantasy prices can be real (Score:2)
Yes, though the prices are a load of dung, they mean a whole lot when your insurance rejects the services over some technicality. Instead of you paying your portion of the insured rate, which may amount to 2% of their fantasy list price, in such cases the hospital will come after you for the full 100%, with an offer to accept 80% if you hurry up and pay Right Now. That's right, they aren't stopping at the insured rate which may be 40% of that fantasy list price, they go for it all. In such cases, medical
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More likely javascript that only pulls and displays the pricing info once it's sure you aren't a web crawler.
Clear, accessible, consumer-friendly (Score:5, Interesting)
1. As a comprehensive machine-readable file with all items and services.
2. In a display of shoppable services in a consumer-friendly format.
It doesn't sound like this web pages meet the clear, accessible and consumer-friendly criteria.
CMS plans to audit a sample of hospitals for compliance starting in January, in addition to investigating complaints that are submitted to CMS and reviewing analyses of non-compliance, and hospitals may face civil monetary penalties for noncompliance
Mayhap, some complaints to CMS might assist them in their task.
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we just post the charge master price that few pay
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it's called drive by doctoring and outnetwork can (Score:2)
it's called drive by doctoring and out network can be as high as 100K or more for one event.
Pricing ? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is having to use the words "hospital" and "pricing" in the same sentence.
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MRI machines cost money. Surgical suites cost money.
They don't magically appear out of thin air.
Surgeons cost money (partly because their insurance costs a ton of money).
Hiding the prices is one way you end up paying far too much.
And no, sending the money to Washington politicians and back doesn't make it free. Having the politicians take a cut and send it back makes things cost more, not less.
My doctor said I needed an MRI and handed me the phone number of an MRI place. I called them and asked the price.
Re:Pricing ? (Score:5, Insightful)
And the last time I needed an MRI I had to do no legwork, and instead my doctor sent me for one, they booked me in the following day, I turned up and was seen within 30 minutes, my doctor received the report the next day digitally, and it cost me nothing.
I pay my taxes, for me healthcare is as "free" as the police, local government, the fire service, the military, roads, sewage handling, the postal service etc etc etc. I pay taxes and I receive benefits from society as a result - and so does the rest of society.
Notice how politicians are absolutely perfectly fine with charging you through the nose for all manner of bureaucracy by putting in place layers and layers of government - local, county, state, national etc etc. And people seem to be happy about that, or at least don't seem to care. But dare to consider that they could also pay for healthcare for everyone and suddenly you have people up in arms about how badly they would do it...
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You’re still way off when looking at Canada at least.
Re:Pricing ? (Score:5, Informative)
Oh look, the same old tired argument about taxes.
Let me refer you to my earlier post, specifically this line in it:
"I pay my taxes, for me healthcare is as "free" as the police, local government, the fire service, the military, roads, sewage handling, the postal service etc etc etc. I pay taxes and I receive benefits from society as a result - and so does the rest of society."
Where are your arguments against the military, police, fire service, roads, sewage, *government* etc etc? It always seems to be healthcare which takes the brunt, but people seem to give all the other things a silent wash.
And my current top tax rate is 33% - and that only applies to half my income. I'm happy to pay a little extra in taxes for absolutely no liability should I have a heart attack, or suffer from cancer. I don't have to worry about getting sick - thats worth an additional 10% in taxes to me, for sure.
Also, as a parting gift, let me remind you that America spends more per capita on Medicare and Medicaid to service a fraction of your population than most other decent socialised healthcare systems do to service all the population - I get my MRI for free, meanwhile you still have to pay for your MRI and you pay taxes for other people to receive semi-socialised healthcare. That just sucks and you don't even realise you are doing it.
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Right.
Like you said, in the US, we can't even afford the socialized medicine we currently have for the extreme poor and the elderly...how the fsck do people expect the feds can somehow afford it is we lump everyone on top of those we already cannot afford to treat?
And you add that on top of the trillions spent on COVID relief?
A trillion here, and trillion there...at some point that real
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Because the costs have escalated obscenely over the fact that healthcare is profit driven in the USA. Again you're forgetting that the rest of the world has this figured out already. It would take lots of restructuring but it could be done.
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because at the end of the day, doctor pay even in a country with socialized medicine plus the social prestige of being a doctor is better than minimum wage for shoveling shit. Also they probably didn't get saddled with a lifetime of student loan payments.
The U.S. is far from the only country that produces medical innovation and the corporate world is not really the largest contributor even then. Many of the innovations that seem to come from U.S. corporations started from government grants and only got hand
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The other countries afford it by refusing to pay outrageous prices for medical supplies and services. The manufacturers sell to them anyway because a fair profit beats no profit at all. Sure, they would like to get $1000 for $3 worth of pills but they'd rather accept $10 for a profit of $7 than a giant goose egg.
I have no idea why you'd rather give them $1000.
Re:Pricing ? (Score:5, Insightful)
> pay my taxes, for me healthcare is as "free" as the police, local government
You know it's not free. No point in calling it "free" twice.
Its as free as anything else government supplied in my life.
So its free. It costs me nothing to use. Thats free in my book.
You simply don't know how much it costs and have zero control over costs.
For example I need some dental work done.
There's the $250 option, the $1,500 option, and the $6,000 option. I have control over which I get. You don't. It's not free for you, it's simply out of your control.
You keel over from a heart attack - tell me, how much control do you have over your options then? Do you get the ambulance which charges you $200 or the one which charges you $500? Do you get the ER doctor who is stingy with the drugs and tests and only charges you $25,000 or do you get the one who hits you with everything and then charges you $50,000? Do you get the ICU bed with the dedicated nurse or do you get the one where one nurse is shared between two or three patients?
Oh, I guess you still have control over which bankruptcy lawyer to pay when you realise you can't pay the $250,000 bill because the wrong ambulance took you to the wrong hospital and your insurance won't pay out, or is giving you a 90% deductible...
You have as much control as I do when it comes down to it - and for dental work, I can either *choose* to go with the state option, or - and this is going to *blow* your freaking *mind* - I can pay to go privately. But even if I choose to go privately, that doesn't preclude someone else from getting the state option.
Yay! Are you familiar with the "diet Coke and Mentos" xkcd?
You're one of today's lucky 10,000! I'm excited for you!
The "diet Coke and Mentos" for today is public goods and private goods. Public goods are just what they sound like - they serve the public, as a whole. There is not one F-16 protecting you and another one protecting your neighbor. The military protects the *country*, as a whole. You can't choose to have an aircraft carrier protecting you, while your neighbor is protected by a tank. Same with the highways - the highway is for everyone. You aren't going to choose cement while you're driving and your neighbor get asphalt on their highway. You and your neighbor are necessarily protected by the same military, and the same fire department, at the exact same time. Those are called public goods. They are properly (and necessarily) provided in a public fashion. Those are public goods.
Now let's consider your car, or your dinner.
How about instead we consider something which makes sense in this context - the state isnt building a hospital for me, it isnt employing a doctor for me, it isnt buying a bed for me, it isnt stocking a drugs cabinet for me. Its doing it for society, and on occasion I come to need it, just as on occasion I come to need a police officers time, the fire brigades time, the military to defend me and so on...
Now, that makes more sense as a comparison doesn't it?
Yes, there are consumables involved - I consume a bed in a hospital, I consume time on an MRI machine, I consume drugs, I consume some police officers time, I consume some fire fighters time, I consume bullets and bombs dropped from your F-16 in its defence of me and my property.
Your coke and mentos thing is a poor explanation.
Do you want to the generic medicine that costs $4/bottle and you take it twice a day, or the new one that you only take once a day, but it costs ten times as much?
If the $4/bottle one works, I'm more than willing to take it if it saves costs - if the other $36 can go toward the rest of my treatment or indeed someone elses treatment, I'm happy with that.
Should *I* tell you which one you have to get? If so, why?
Well, heres the fantastic thing buddy - *you* don't get to
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I keep hearing this...WTF would I want to have to pay TWICE to get the same level of health care I currently get?
(in this case the example is dental )
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People are literally brainwashed in the USA when it comes down to healthcare. Ask any employer what their biggest expense is after paying salaries and it's going to be healthcare costs.
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In the US, if you keel over from a heart attack, a private ambulance comes pick you up in most places within 5-8 minutes, for actual free
You've apparently never taken an ambulance in the US, nor know anyone who has ever taken an ambulance. Nor consumed any media about ambulance service. Nor looked at your own health insurance's ambulance coverage.
In other words, you could not be more wrong on this if you tried.
Most hospitals in the US are likewise non-profits or state operated.
Non-profit doesn't mean no-profit. It means they pay their executives a shitload of money and build a bunch of very expensive unused facilities to eat up the profits.
Most people have insurance, those that can't afford it get free or low cost insurance from the government.
No, the bureaucratic line for "can't afford it" is set far before
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No, you are simply thoroughly misinformed. Regards ambulances, I was pointing to the practice of asking for a credit card or check before they pick you up
Then you are widely misinformed about what "for actual free" means.
I didn't say ambulances weren't expensive
You literally said it was free in the US.
I've worked for non-profit hospitals, they are extremely concerned about pricing, their executives do not all have yachts. Nor do the doctors all have big cars. That is a big misconception
The misconception is believing your anecdote is data.
Non-profit hospitals make a shitload of money. That's why hedge fund-backed groups are buying them. Maintaining 'non-profit' status is an accounting exercise, not an indication of altruism.
Not sure where you get the notion that buildings go unused
When people talk about the horror of waiting lists in other countries, that happens because the facility is busy. There are not a lot of long waiting lists in
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I didn't say ambulances weren't expensive, they are, regardless of location
a private ambulance comes pick you up in most places within 5-8 minutes, for actual free, regardless of the issue.
which is it, for actual free, or expensive?
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OMFG: IF you make minimum wage, you qualify for low-cost and free healthcare in the US
Read this bit again:
In states that did not expand Medicaid as part of the ACA, that is not low enough to get coverage through Medicaid. Yet because the law was written such that expansion was assumed, there are no subsidies available for that person to buy a private plan.
if I go to my insurers page and plug in that I make less than $30k/year I get plans for $25/month.
And what state are you in? If your state expanded Medicaid, your insurance market is not the same as one that did not expand Medicaid.
Low income where you no longer get assistance with healthcare is $48000-65000 depending on your state.
No. Here's the limits for Alabama: https://medicaid.alabama.gov/d... [alabama.gov]
You have to be 1) elderly or disable
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Checkboxed I make less than $49,900 "you qualify for a subsidy
Those subsidies are from the ACA. They kick in above the income for expanded Medicaid. If a state didn't expand Medicaid, then there is a large hole between Medicaid and the start of the subsidies.
Are you under the illusion that the brief blurb written by the marketing department would explain this complexity to you?
(The COVID relief bill fills in this hole. I don't know when that part of the bill takes effect).
Apparently having an open market rather than a regulated (ACA) market lowers costs.
Yeah, those subsidies from the ACA surely lowered costs in those non-ACA markets!!! :eyeroll:
H
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You know it's not free. No point in calling it "free" twice. You simply don't know how much it costs and have zero control over costs. For example I need some dental work done. There's the $250 option, the $1,500 option, and the $6,000 option. I have control over which I get. You don't. It's not free for you, it's simply out of your control.
So you're presenting three marginal costs of a certain procedure after he stated that he underwent a procedure with a zero marginal cost and then you're arguing about fixed costs and saying that "it wasn't free". Nice equivocation fallacy there.
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For example I need some dental work done.
There's the $250 option, the $1,500 option, and the $6,000 option. I have control over which I get. You don't. It's not free for you, it's simply out of your control.
The only difference is that I can see the price difference between the doctor with the big beautiful tropical fish tank in the gold office tower vs the clinic over by the laundromat. I can pick which one to go to. You ain't getting it for free, you're only giving up choice, that's all that changes.
Yeah!
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Just FYI, when you choose to act like an idiot while also supporting government-run medicine, the impression people get is:
Idiots support government-run medicine.
You're accomplishing the exact opposite of what you're trying to accomplish.
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Your post is full of strawmen.
Richard_at_work said nothing about being his healthcare being absolutely free. He said it was as free as the police are - he pays his taxes and gets government services for it.
You claim without evidence that Richard_at_work has no control over his options. At the least
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This is the dopiest abuse of that XKCD strip I've ever seen, because you've fundamentally misunderstood how healthcare works.
Healthcare is a public good. It serves the public, as a whole. It is a system, made up of many smaller parts. The system I happen to live in right now is a bureaucratic mess a lot of the time, but it's a unified bureaucratic mess. I throw my name into the pool for a colonoscopy, say, and some hospital in the network will eventually call me (within in a month or so, but it depends on t
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Again, a public good is where the whole community is served at the same time, by the same thing. One F-16 (or a squadron of them) is protecting the whole area. There isn't one F-16 protecting you and a different one protecting your neighbor.
That's why it would be non-sensical for you to try to have an F-16 protect you while an A-10 protects your neighbor. Because the same plane is protecting lots of people all at once.
A car is a private good, because the whole neighborhood can't use the same car at the sam
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So in a weird, backhanded way, you were right. I did learn something today. But it's not the thing that you expected.
"Law enforcement, streets, libraries, museums, and education are commonly misclassified as public goods, but they are technically classified in economic terms as quasi-public goods because excludability is possible, but they do still fit some of the characteristics of public goods."
I would argue that based on this classification, Health Care provided by the government is also a quasi-public g
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>So in a weird, backhanded way, you were right. I did learn something today.
That's one of the best things that can happen in a conversation, isn't it. So yay.
> A doctor is not something that I'm going to use up by seeing, even if there is a temporary exclusion for others
It seems to me, if I have a box of cereal that's a private good - it gets used up. Unlike a public good, which doesn't get used up. The fact that there is more than bowl of cereal in each box doesn't change that.
Similarly, if I can
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And when you go to the hospital, you don't just pay for you. Your bill covers all the ER walkouts that can't afford to pay. You can either pay through inflated pricing or via public healthcare. Either way, you're not just paying for yourself.
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> You really went out of your way to misunderstand that, didn't you? Free as in police means you pay taxes (or whatever you want to call it)
Let's call it what it is. We're talking about the price of things.
You're referring to a system many system) that requires:
A. You pay up front
B. You have influence over how much you spend - you pay whatever the politician says you have to pay.
Normally, "free" doesn't mean "you are forced to pay whatever someone demands of you". Free would mean you don't pay. Alternati
Dang typos (Score:2)
Ugh, I hate it when I make typos that reverse the meaning, like leaving out the words "no" or "not".
Somebody is offering you a system in which:
A. You are forced pay up front
B. You aren't allowed to know how much you're paying.
B. You no freedom over how much you spend - you pay whatever the politician says you have to pay.
High cost and zero freedom and they have you calling that "free".
Sneaky buggers, aren't they? They have you calling it exact the opposite of what it is.
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Healthcare costs way less in other countries because the government sets the cost instead of the hospitals asking for a number and the insurance companies coming back with an offer. Your taxes go towards healthcare so you can certainly figure out how much you're paying. Your last point is a joke. Are you bargaining with your local county's sales tax over how many roads get paved with your share? No you pay the sales tax end of story.
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it sure isn't my ~23%
Ignorfidence at its finest?
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You've been fooled! You are being taxed piecemeal. Add up all of your taxes (federal, state, local, plus sales tax). Now add in your insurance premium (include the part your employer pays). Don't forget your employer's social security contribution over and above your witholding. Now add up the taxes for someone with socialized medicine (including VAT).
You will probably be surprised once you look at the apples to apples comparison.
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This is something entirely unique to the United States. Price shopping for routine medical care. We can’t have that terrible socialized medicine here! The rest of the world figured this out ages ago.
Re: Pricing ? (Score:2)
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Yeah we should just pay whatever the director of the hospital wants, so he has all the money he wants to "donate" to the politician.
You tell him!
The rest of the world does it wrong! We do it right!
Like the metric system!
He doesn’t realize that hospital directors charge Medicare whatever they want, and Medicare totally pays it. That’s why everyone fights so hard to get Medicare patients.
My grandfather got a simple physical, and you know what it cost?
A jillion dollars! Yep, that’s jillion w
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No in civilized countries the government sets the pricing so hospitals can't gouge. Healthcare is seen as a right and not a profit.
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Yes, pricing is set by politicians that are funded by the doctors.
Do you know how much your last doctor visit cost?
Nope, and you pretty much don't care. The politician can have you paying his donors as much as he wants, and you just keep on not caring because you think it's "free".
Re:Pricing ? (Score:5, Funny)
MRI machines cost money. Surgical suites cost money.
They don't magically appear out of thin air.
Surgeons cost money (partly because their insurance costs a ton of money).
This!
See, Americans take for granted that we have MRI machines and surgeons that aren’t starving.
You know what they use in Sweden? Empty Pez dispensers.
Imagine going to a hospital in Sweden, only to have the emaciated, malnourished doctor come out and start banging the effected area with an empty Pez dispenser.
Because that’s exactly what they do over there. Why? Because MRI machines cost money, and the plucked chicken carcasses they send to the MRI companies just don’t cut it.
Some people simply don’t get it, though.
Re:Pricing ? (Score:5, Informative)
The populations of Ontario and Pennsylvania are about the same. Pennsylvania has about 4 times the number of facilities that can do open heart surgery, but Ontario and PA have the same health outcomes for serious heart conditions. So the people in PA, and the US, are paying for healthcare they don't need.
That's what you get when doctors and hospitals are paid by the procedure and not by the outcome. That's also what you get when there's a free market on pharmaceuticals, procedures, and medical devices. Insurers and providers jack prices up and we're forced to pay for it all out of our paychecks, and through deductibles and co-pays.
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There is absolutely nothing free market about the US health system.
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''There is absolutely nothing free market about the US health system.''
Then how does an EpiPen cost 700 bucks when epinephrine has been around forever and can be bought OTC in an inhaler for 25 bucks? There's no other reason to see cost increase from the 100 price in 2007 [which is a major profit margin] than market capture and greed. Why did they raise the prices, not because manufacturing costs increased, they increased them because the have a captive market and they fucking could. Ask Skrelli about that.
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Or Pennsylvania is simply home to the Philly cheesesteak and need 4x the heart care.
Re:Pricing ? (Score:5, Insightful)
No one is suggesting these things don't paid for. But what is "pricing". How does the MRI in one hospital cost in any way more or less than an MRI in another? I mean unless you run your hospital as a for profit enterprise rather than a medical service. But no one in a first world country would be mad enough to do that right?
Jokes aside. I have lived in various countries, from those where I never received a bill for an MRI, xray or whatever, to those where I received a bill that was covered by insurance, but the price was 100% fixed regardless of which hospital I was referred to.
I had a muscle that failed to heal last year and was referred to all sorts of places. There was no Google search. There was no $1500 or $450. There was just the system which lists medical services that offer MRI and you get automatically referred to the closest one. The insurance company gets a bill with a line item for standardised cost - MRI, and that's that. There is no cheaper, or more expensive. There is just the MRI.
Would you buy a car or even a phone without checking the price?
Funny you should say that. When I travel by Uber I pay the same price whether the driver shows up in a Camry or an Astra. I assume you didn't buy your MRI machine, but rather paid for a service right?
Actually since you mention buy, the price of medicine for any drug that requires a prescription here is also fixed.
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I had a muscle that failed to heal last year and was referred to all sorts of places. There was no Google search. There was no $1500 or $450. There was just the system which lists medical services that offer MRI and you get automatically referred to the closest one. The insurance company gets a bill with a line item for standardised cost - MRI, and that's that. There is no cheaper, or more expensive. There is just the MRI.
You bought the insurance next to the laundromat, didn’t you?
I told you to get t
You just defeated your argument (Score:2)
> Funny you should say that. When I travel by Uber I pay the same price whether the driver shows up in a Camry or an Astra.
Funny you should say that. Uber has four levels of cars with different pricing. UberX, UberXL, Uber Black, Black SUV
The Camry is X level (basic) everywhere.
The Opel Astra isn't allowed most places, it's X level in Germany. A nicer car from the same manufacturer, the Opel Zafira, costs more.
So no, you don't pay the same price for a really nice car as you do for a lesser one. In fact,
Re:You just defeated your argument (Score:5, Insightful)
So no, you don't pay the same price for a really nice car as you do for a lesser one. In fact, you don't even pay the same price for the same car at different TIMES with Uber! So a perfect example of exactly the opposite of the point you were hoping to make!
When you're done autistically missing my point, did you quiz your doctor on the exact model of MRI he was going to use? Did it come with a leather bench?
Here, Garbz just laid out a couple great example of "different levels of service, all of which are sufficient, have different prices".
Actually I did no such thing. Your problem is that you are systematically attempting to circumvent my point. When you call an Uber you don't get to chose the specific car. You don't get to chose the driver. You don't get to watch them on the track or judge their skill, and whoever shows up will charge you the same rate. Different level of service is just stupid when you apply it to the medical industry. Your MRI is an MRI, if it fails to diagnose the problem you move onto other diagnostics not "oooh I need MRI premium".
Part of the cost difference is the second place offered lower pricing during times of lower demand, just exactly like Uber!
The only reason you have lower demand in different places is because you have a poorly managed hospital system in your city. When I call an Uber the demand pricing isn't localised to me within a few km, it's localised to an entire city. The fact you think MRIs should be more localised in pricing than that just shows you spectacularly missed the point I was making.
Honestly I don't know why you people get so defensive of your broken medical system.
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Well, depends on how old the MRI machine is and what type it is...the open magnet ones are often a bit more expensive to purchase than the regular ones.
All MRI machines are not the same.
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Are you saying each hospital budgets for individual equipment equally rather than this being centrally managed by the medical association of your state? Man that's more fucked up than I thought.
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Well, yes...the equipment is NOT owned by the state or the federal govt...yours is?!?!
It isn't always a hospital that owns them, I worked with a radiologist that owned his own MRI and CT machines in a clinic and hospitals and other Dr's outsource to him to perform the studies and do the readings.
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That's true. On the other hand, you had already chosen that hospital. It was too late to *change your mind*, but you did get an opportunity earlier to choose.
With the new law, all of the hospitals in your area would have posted their prices on their web sites. Quite likely one hospital would have generally lower charges than the other, rather than one charging much more for one thing while the other charges much more for the PET. So you would have already been at the reasonably-priced hospital.
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MRI machines cost money. Surgical suites cost money. They don't magically appear out of thin air. Surgeons cost money (partly because their insurance costs a ton of money).
And yet here in the UK we have all of those things and nobody ever asks or worries what the bill is because there isn't one. When I needed a MRI here in the UK it cost me £0. In fact if I'd been on a low income the hospital would have covered my travel expenses to go for it.
You paid about 12,000 GBP (Score:2)
> When I needed a MRI here in the UK it cost me £0.
According to ONS, it costed you about 12,000 GBP.
8,068 per family on average, with the middle class paying most of that. So you probably paid 8,068 for your family, and about 4,000 for a family with a lower income.
You don't actually believe that "they yanked it out of my paycheck before I could even deposit the check" means "it's free", do you? I mean, you're brighter than that, right?
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Would you buy a car or even a phone without checking the price?
Would you call 911 without checking the price of a fire truck? You are attacking a straw man. The point isn't that healthcare should be free. The point is that a market is not an efficient way to allocate health care resources. I'd love for you to prove me wrong with an overwhelming number peer reviewed papers that link profitability to positive outcomes. If all you have is some news articles and blog posts, don't bother.
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So how do you explain the US spending almost twice the amount per capita on health care costs compared to other countries?
According to your logic, al that opportunity for shopping around should mean you pay less on aggregate. So either Americans are too stupid to shop around, or your thesis that a free market in hospital services is more efficient is bunk.
Empirically, central pricing for hospital services, either through government backed insurance or compulsory private insurance, is more efficient and cost
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All I read is blind regurgitation of Heritage Foundation talking points.
Here's a cracker, Polly. Now fuck off.
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When someone points out to you simple mathematical facts that show an argument is incorrect, like 77 is not half of 100, you have two choices:
A. Learn something
B. Freak out over the cognitive dissonance and scream "fuck off"
I see you've chosen option B.
Which is sad, because a choice to never learn is a choice to never know anything.
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The problem is having to use the words "hospital" and "pricing" in the same sentence.
They will give you the real price afterwords(after being sometimes they send to collectiosn first. What they lack is any kind of honesty. There is zero honesty in the billing practices of the medical/hospital field. While the front workers taking my CC may seam honest, the billing and everything they are front ending is not.
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While the front workers taking my CC may seam honest
Why? Do they actually tell you:
“I understand that you’re paying out of pocket but we still need your social social security number. See, we’re going to upcode the hell out of everything we do for you, and when you see your bill, you will have major sticker shock. Without our ability to extort you via ‘your credit report’, there’s no way in hell you’d pay what we’re going to demand. Oh, not to mention, my
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I got the bill for TWO broken foot treatments. Why? Because two bones were broken. I protested. Insurance called the doctor's office and they said, "no mistake, we did it on purpose." So, it was $700 for 5 minutes.
Re:Pricing ? (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is having to use the words "hospital" and "pricing" in the same sentence.
Crazy talk. The free market works. Especially with hidden or unknowable until- you’redischarged pricing. The free market works best like that.
Why?
Because with the exception of social security, Medicare, fire protection, police, public schools, the military, the EPA, the FDA, NASA, the National Weather Service, and a bunch of other stuff to numerous to mention, we do not tolerate providing for the general welfare in this country, even though that’s exactly what the constitution says government is supposed to do.
The freedom to lose your home and go bankrupt due to illness is a freedom you pinko commies don’t have.
Jealous?
Fuck yeah you’re jealous!
These colors don’t run, bitch! ‘Merca, yeah! Wooo! Oh yeah, and our basketball team is better than yours too!
Hah, suck it, loser!
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Indeed, it's a shame our US friends don't understand the benefits of a social health care system. While such systems are rarely perfect, your life usually doesn't depend on whether you can afford it or not. I much prefer knowing my out-of-pocket expenses are nearly always zero.
Tons of us do realize it, but Democracy is idiot rule so we can’t have it.
Critical/abstract thinking begins around 110 IQ. The average American is 98. 2/3rds are under this and learn by repetition and what they’
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Yes, many of us understand that other, more socialist nations have plain better health care, for half the cost.
The reasons why the US does not have it are many, First, employers use healthcare as another hold over employees. Lose your job, and you and your whole family also lose healthcare. So you're not going to complain about bad working conditions, are you? Or join a union?!?
Second is bigotry, especially racism. Lot of white bigots don't want brown people to receive medical care, and will forgo
The prices are on display (Score:5, Funny)
While the prices are still there, it requires clicking through multiple layers of pages to find them.
“But the prices were on display”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the prices, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. They were on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
-- with apologies to Douglas Adams
Available, but as hard as possible to access (Score:5, Interesting)
Interestingly, my hospitals 'self-pay rates' (no insurance) are significantly lower than their insured rates. In my case, this meant that I actually paid more for an emergency room visit out of pocket than I would have without any insurance at all. Their self-pay rate was $780 for one CPT code but $2,550 when covered by my insurer. The hospital made an agreement with my insurer to bill for much higher rates for some CPT codes when they were involved. Since most people have a deductible and an even larger out-of-pocket maximum the insurer doesn't have to pay that full price in most cases. My insurer only reimbursed them for about $300 on that CPT code. I ended up owing the hospital over $2,200 because I had to pay the rest. I would have paid $780 without any insurance at all. Can you request the self-pay rates for situations where your deductible is high or something like that? Sure, but only BEFORE you receive treatment. After you have been treated they won't work with you on prices, only repayment plans. The best part? My hospital claims they are a non-profit.
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My hospital system actually has the prices fairly accessible. Once you locate the page (search price list on their site), there are links to one JSON file per hospital.
Interestingly, you can see what the negotiated price for the various insurers is in addition to self pay. Current prices as of the end of December.
Shady but legal (Score:5, Informative)
My local USA hospitals won't even talk to you without insurance. The refused to quote me on my own. As of 18 mos ago, I had to have cochlear implants put in. Out of work the whole time. There is now a cool quarter million $$$ buried in my skull.
Did you know that the medical industry is exempt from RICO? If anyone else did what they did, they would be risking jail time like the Mob.
Regarding medical expenses in the US: The US pays almost 2x as much per capita than anyone else and it is *NOT* because of the uninsured. Go to the SEC and find out the truth -- it all goes to "administrative overhead" AKA executive salaries. Blue Cross alone has an overhead over 40% That is just the insurance. Now figure the drug companies, with double and triple-digit price hikes in the last 2 years. And of course the hospital execs.
The cost of overhead in Medicare? Single digits.
The reason why universal healthcare works in places like Europeis because they don't allow that kind of skimming.
I hope and *pray* the US goes to Medicare for all, even if they double my medicare taxes it would still save me over 10 grand per year in insurance premiums.
I mean, why the hell don't people just do the math?? I thought this was news for nerds?? The reason why healthcare in the US is so expensive is because it is *for profit* instead of *at cost*.
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Medicare beneficiaries still have to purchase private insurance to cover the many things that Medicare doesn't
No, they can purchase private insurance to cover the co-insurance for stuff in Medicare Part B. It's still covered by Medicare, just not at 100%.
TL:DR version of Medicare:
Medicare Part A: Everything in a hospital. Covered 100%.
Medicare Part B: Everything not in a hospital. Covered 80%.
Medicare Part C: First Republican attempt at privatization, it's an HMO. Coverage is as complicated as an HMO.
Medicare Part D: "Hmm...expensive drugs are making people talk about single-payer again. Let's slap together so
Nobody has a problem with doctors' high salaries (Score:2)
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I assume the same way they get money to pay doctors in every other country where the idea of "pricing" when discussing medical treatment will be met with a confused "huh?"
I mean I've never heard of this concept of hospital pricing, that didn't stop me getting an MRI, Xray, and 3 visits to an orthopedic surgeon specializing in sports injuries last year.
Though I can't say I'm completely happy with the result. Doctor + physio + Xray + MRI + Orthopedic surgery cost me $250. That is outrageously high. It would h
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The hospitals don't pay those doctors. The doctors send their own bill.
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Well...this IS a US centric site.