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by restlessmike
4652 days ago
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I'm sure this has been pointed out many times when these posts pop up, but what is shocking to me is that we tolerate $200k medical bills for this sort of emergency care, as long as we aren't the ones paying for them ourselves. The healthcare industry needs a lot more transparency. Every hospital should be required (if they choose to accept Medicare/Medicaid patients) to publish prices in an easily comparable format tied to standard medical codes for every service/procedure they provide, and should be required to charge individuals without insurance no more than the government or other large insurer pays. This would seem pretty simple to implement and would, over time, help keep prices lower simply by making them public and allowing people to compare them. The information asymmetry in the industry has created a situation where people are powerless to help themselves and make smart choices with regard to getting healthcare, and has led to the creation of another expensive program that we can't afford. Sadly, we have a system in which the industries being regulated control the dialog, and they are all too happy to tiptoe past prices and on to who is footing the bill. |
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OK, yes. What it really needs is to be an open market both for care and insurance. Competition has amazing ways to both improve quality and affordability. This has been proven time and time again across a myriad of fields both within and well outside of medicine. Nothing beats open market competition. When providers and insurance companies truly have to compete for your business things change.
The ACA (Obamacare) is a disaster full of typical government-driven unintended consequences. We are just starting to see the tip of the iceberg. Funny that the very people who passed it will not have to live within this monstrous framework. And now the very unions who helped push it forward had an "oh-shit!" moment. They learned just how fucked it's going to be and want out.
I say, we are all on the same boat or shred the damn thing. If we are going to have socialized medicine the only equitable approach is that everyone, without exceptions, has to use it. All exceptions granted by POTUS need to be rescinded.