DEFENSIVE MEDICINE is what causes costs to always SOAR!

[FA_Q2]

A few extra blood tests is usually not defensive medicine. Sending every patient to get a CT scan that costs 100 TIMES more than a blood test is generally what drives things up. Also, no doctor acts in ways to avoid driving up malpractice insurance cost. They act to avoid getting SUED.

That was partially the point I was going to make but no one took me up on the offer. CT scans only cost what they do because of the insane practices of how we pay for basic care. I can get an MRI for under 200 bucks but I will guarantee that cost is several magnitudes higher for anyone that has insurance.

You're absolutely right. I remember seeing a letter written by someone and published in the AARP newsletter when the health care debate was in full swing, and it went something like: "After a visit to my doctor for [something], I was told my insurance company would be billed $200, so I asked the doctor (who is also my friend) what it would cost if I just paid the bill in cash. His response was Oh, about $40.00"

That kind of collaboration is why capitalism is becoming a dirty word.

This is one if the reasons why I am so against the healthcare bill. Giving everyone healthcare insurance is not the answer but rather the fastest way to make the problem worse. The issue is not if you have insurance but the actual cost of procedures themselves and the way that we pay for those services. If you were accountable for the small instances and could see the impact of the larger ones then the system would have to come up with a more reasonable price scheme. We do not need basic coverage fore everyone, we need majpr coverage for everyone and basic coverage for no one.

 

[SmarterThanHick]

Tort reform is just a fancy of saying you lose your rights to finiancial redress if you are wronged by a doctors error.

That is not the goal of tort reform. What you are describing is removing medical torts entirely. No one has EVER proposed that patients should not be able to sue their doctors. The proposal is that patients cannot sue their doctors for trivial things when the doctor has done no wrong. As long as the plaintiff loses no money, and only stands to gain money, regardless of whether the doctors has done something wrong, there will be fraudulent and misguided lawsuits, and doctors will lose money for it.

That was partially the point I was going to make but no one took me up on the offer. CT scans only cost what they do because of the insane practices of how we pay for basic care. I can get an MRI for under 200 bucks but I will guarantee that cost is several magnitudes higher for anyone that has insurance.

It's usually the opposite. If you look at your insurance bill, you generally see a set cost, and a lower cost paid by insurance. Now you are right in that you can probably go to whatever doctor and offer a cheaper amount in cash than the full bill. So why does that happen? Well, it always goes back to price inflation due to people not paying their bills. In short: people who don't pay make things more expensive for everyone else.

Ya think? Study after study proves that assumption wrong. Here's just one.

http://www.justice.org/resources/Medical_Negligence_Primer.pdf

I can certainly be wrong, but I don't see your point being supported by that pdf. Care to provide a page number or other source?

 

[uscitizen]

That is not the goal of tort reform. What you are describing is removing medical torts entirely. No one has EVER proposed that patients should not be able to sue their doctors. The proposal is that patients cannot sue their doctors for trivial things when the doctor has done no wrong. As long as the plaintiff loses no money, and only stands to gain money, regardless of whether the doctors has done something wrong, there will be fraudulent and misguided lawsuits, and doctors will lose money for it.

Simple, just ban lawyers from the it costs you nothing unless you win suits.
Ban lawyers from running advertisements promoting suits as well.

 

[FA_Q2]

That was partially the point I was going to make but no one took me up on the offer. CT scans only cost what they do because of the insane practices of how we pay for basic care. I can get an MRI for under 200 bucks but I will guarantee that cost is several magnitudes higher for anyone that has insurance.

It's usually the opposite. If you look at your insurance bill, you generally see a set cost, and a lower cost paid by insurance. Now you are right in that you can probably go to whatever doctor and offer a cheaper amount in cash than the full bill. So why does that happen? Well, it always goes back to price inflation due to people not paying their bills. In short: people who don't pay make things more expensive for everyone else.

Incorrect. The insurance company pays a lesser portion of the advertised price because of a deal that is worked out beforehand. YOU can pay far less than ether of those numbers should you walk in an just plop some cash on the table. For example: a doctor may bill 1K for an MRI and the insurance company will likely pay a lower cost like 600 but you would likely pay 200 for the same procedure without the medical insurer in the way. The hidden inflationary costs of those that do not pay are still there even when you pay cash. The main difference is twofold:
ONE: You are now dealing directly with the customer and subject to the market. The customer may walk away or find another provider. It is simpler in many cases to simply provide a decent price at that time.

TWO: there is no bloated approval process, paperwork or bullshit dealings with a third party payer. It is simple and clean and that saves the provider not only money but headache. That gives them incentive to use you as a customer as well as a FAR greater profit margin.

What it boils down to in the end is what I have been trying to say: Insurance companies should not be involved in any small procedures and market forces should be defining prices here. That is the absolute best way to drive prices down.
STATE SLAPS DR. DO-GOOD - NYPOST.com
An excellent example of a doctor that was doing exactly that and then the state tried to SHUT HIM DOWN!! This is the type of thing that needs to be ENCOURAGED but the more law that is put up (like this asinine healthcare law) the further from reality this tyoe of care will become. It is complete bullshit that we are not trying to get more of this type of thing out there instead of shutting it down.

I have accrued well in excess of a million dollars in medical bills in just the last few years. There is real need for true medical insurance at the more catastrophic levels but there in one thing that I have learned from all those bills; the price has NOTHING to do with the procedure, how complicated it is or how many personnel it takes. I have seen 100K bills for simple procedures and a few thousand for the more complicated ones. There is an EXTREME disconnect between the prices for these goods and the actual value of them. That disconnect exists because no one pays for care themselves and so the actual price is meaningless.

An excellent example of this is when I tried to get a cleaning from a dentist without insurance. I called OVER A DOZEN dental clinics to check prices. After all, that's what you do when you need to make an expensive purchase. Only 4 could even give me a price. That's right, 8 dental offices COULD NOT EVEN GIVE ME A QUOTE. The fact is, they had no idea what they charged. Of the four that did answer, the price ranged from 200 to over 1000! There was zero continuity in the pricing and service that the individual offices offered because NO ONE PRICE CHECKS. That is the bane of insurance. Had cleanings not been covered by insurance I can guarantee that they all would have had quotes, all of them been competitive to some degree and it is damn likely I could have gotten a cleaning for far cheaper. Insurance covering the minor things is corrupting the system at its base and this bill increases this particular problem.