Trump cheats at golf - the ONE and ONLY politics thread

Why is it dumb?

 

Because in no other business are services performed when the customer is unconscious. Well, other than undertaking.

It is completely possible to be struck by a car, spend 30 days in a coma at a hospital, wake up and find yourself already $500,000 in debt. At what point were any choices available to you?

 

Not every single medical exam, test and procedure is performed on an unconscious patient. There are plenty of medical services for which the patient would be wise to compare costs, but nobody does.

 

I just hope I get some coupons.

 

This is exactly why we need death panels.

 

I am glad that you are such an avid supporter of Obamacare, because one of its main tenets is to make people better consumers of health care and to comparison shop and ask for prices beforehand.

 

No. He's exactly right.

 

Ignorance such as this is exactly why health care costs have skyrocketed.

 

Here is an example. My son went to an urgent care center. He thought he might have strep throat.

They charged $396 just for the visit. And the strep tests were on top of that. Our insurance negotiated rate knocked it down to just under $300.

To me, a basic urgent care visit should be no more than $100 or $150. We will not go to that organization's urgent care centers ever again.

 

And a large majority of patients who arrive unconscious have family member -- including spouses or parents -- fully capable of making choices that don't include a price -gouging roto rooter job up the wallet's ass.

 

Because it breaks the rational demand curve. The concept of free markets only works when people can logically make the decision to forgo the product. When much of the product in question is literally the difference between life and death, that's no longer an option. So supply/demand curves break and prices spiral out of control.

 

I think you overestimate how much of the product is the difference between life and death. As I noted, I'm not talking about haggling over the price of suturing up a gaping chest wound in the Emergency Room.

When your doctor sends you for an MRI down the hall to check your knee, you go down the hall and get the MRI, right? But the hospital needs to cover costs for other unprofitable procedures, equipment, supplies and personnel, so it charges your insurance company (and, by extension, you) $5,000. In the medical office park down the street, there is a medical imaging practice, at which they only perform MRIs, X-Rays and CT Scans. Because the practice is small, runs lean and has only the equipment and personnel (which don't include high-priced doctors, just moderately priced technicians) needed to perform this specific function, it charges just $700, and sends the results to your radiologist, who charges $1,000 to read/diagnose the results. If you have a $4,000 deductible, at which place should you get your MRI?

The fact that MRIs can cost the patient/insurance company as little as $474 or as much as $13,259, according to Time.com, tells you that patients should absolutely be shopping for their medical services.