I went in for a physical some years back. Thanks to various anti-competitive mergers, there was now essentially one giant practice in the area.
They billed my insurance $480. The insurer "repriced" that to $60.
Think about that for a second or two. The medicos took an 87.5% haircut on the amount that they wanted to get paid. If they were willing to take $60, than to my mind, that's what the service was worth, not the overinflated bullshit "no insurance" price.
I saw this happen before, when a night-time visit to the ER was billed at over eight grand and they were paid $750. Yet if some schmo without insurance had received the same services, those fuckers would have gone after him for the eight large. And if they couldn't collect, they'd have written off the $8,000, at least as far as the IRS is concerned. Or they would have sold the "medical debt" for a hundred bucks or so and let some bottom-feeding parasite try to collect the money.
Those services were not worth more than $750, because that's what they were willing to take from a party that has the power to bargain with them, in a way that neither you nor I do.
The health care system in this nation is a fucking swindle and it has been for a very long time.
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Without going into details, I’m aware of a drug that is billed monthly to insurance at $9,900 and is paid at $995…lists at pharmacies at $5,000-7,600 and is sold at a discount for $3,700…and offers a discount card that acts as a debit card for up to $15,000 a year off the cost. It’s insane, but the drug is for anyone 6 or older but the discount card is only valid 18 and up…
That's some solid Truth there, Comrade~
This is what happens when you let the insurance companies run the show. Medicare Advantage is a reason to upcode and double bill to see what they can get away with. I did three years of ACA to bridge my ass the Medicare. The vampire squids are changing the names of all of the local practices and hospitals. Carry on.
My doctor "charges" $140 for a check up and Medicare pays him $62, if I remember the numbers correctly. $62 is a fair price for what I get, which is basically my prescriptions being renewed for medicines I've been taking for fifteen years. He did change the dose a few months back, which was helpful.
I miss Highland Hospital in Oakland, where you can get the care you need no matter your circumstances, financial or otherwise. It's crowded, and the waits can be kinda long, but the care is top flight.
-Doug in Sugar Pine
Profit of another's pain. The Potential of Profit of another's pain.
It is becoming my experience that it isn't the health care that sucks ...
I can not fully imagine what the insurer paid for 33 days in
the ICU. I'd guess somewhere north of 330K$ as that is a
10K$ per day minimum. That and the 10 days a month earlier
before.
I do know that cases like that have pushed people to
bankruptcy for a severe disease.
The system is based on greed.
Eck!
Here you go:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2801097
A retiring doc pointed a friend of mine at this article. Since I wuz a kid, 65 years ago and reading my doc father's medical magazines, the Journal of the American Medical Assoc. has been a bastion of conservative resistance against any socialized medicine, yet here in the JAMA is a Jeremiad against Frankenstein's monster Big Medicine has become.
I'd say the vast majority of docs isn't happy at the way it has made them wage slaves and parasitized medical care
The bottom line (from Ars Technica, with the statistics and graphs): US has the worst, most expensive health care of any high-income country
https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/01/us-still-has-the-worst-most-expensive-health-care-of-any-high-income-country/
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