Compare Doctors Without Health Insurance

[dblack]

Killed competition? Then why do doctors value their referral sources so much? Your argument is bogus. Healthcare costs are high because you aren't just paying for the doctors time, you're paying for the dozens of people who developed each drug or piece of lab equipment, the nurses recording your info, the computerized medical system's developers, the pharmacist who fills the prescription, the administrative people who determine payments from your insurance, the fees connected with government testing of every drug and machine, and countless other things.

If everyone involved in medicine makes a "killing," then why doesn't someone undercut them and take away their customers? Private practices are free to charge whatever they want.

There's no competition regarding pricing - because customers don't care. For the most part, they're either "covered", or looking for freebies. Hardly anyone pays out-of-pocket, and that's the problem.

You make a reasonable point that they compete in other ways, but they don't compete on cost efficiency, which is why health care costs keep going up.

Even if the patients don't care, the insurance companies do. If prices were artificially high and another doctor undercut them, the insurance company would choose the new doctor as the preferred provider and all patients with that insurance would flock to the new doctor. Doctors do compete in cost efficiency, people just need to realize how many people are actually involved in their healthcare and how much time and effort doctors spend in school becoming good doctors.

But the insurance companies are a level of magnitude less effective in this regard because they are disconnected third party. And they're up against a regulatory framework built around the presumption that the decisions regarding health care shouldn't be based on financial concerns - that it should be up to the doctor and the patient. They'll never have the same impact on prices as motivated consumers would. That's the problem.

 

[WillowTree]

I do not have health insurance and am looking for a doctor. Is there a way to compare doctor pricing short of having to call each one individually and ask what each charges?

You better get some insurance or we gonna fine your ass.