The proposed solution to balance billing is linking the "out of network rate" to the FAIR health claims database. It keeps the insurers honest and allows competition at the market rate.
If you gut everyone, hospitals will close and access to care will shrink.
[1] https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/healthcare/reports/2...
Everyone pays for the bloated administrative machine that is the elephant in the room that no one seems to ever talk about.
Also, you don't have to do everything, but you could start by doing something other than complaining about doctors who have ruined many people's lives getting paid less.
I'm working on setting up a Bay Area chapter of https://rightcarealliance.org/ (which is national) for grassroots healthcare organizing - feel free to hit me up if you'd like to participate.
At some point someone actually has to set the rate for things. If market mechanisms aren’t working there needs to be another method.
The point here is that sticking customers with out of control surprise bills they have no way of foreseeing or avoiding needs to be removed from the list of options.
The argument here is that by destroying the threat of out of network, the insurance company has literally no incentive to offer rates better than Medicare. That’s a huge unfair advantage to insurance companies.
Yup. Works for me.
> That’s a huge unfair advantage to insurance companies.
Not so much. Guess what I think the next part of the plan should be?
What market rate?
For-profit hospitals mark up prices by more than 1,000 percent because there's nothing to stop them: https://publicintegrity.org/health/for-profit-hospitals-mark...
What kind of market does not allow me, the customer, to know, at all, what my financial liability is?
What kind of market has players mark up prices by more than 1,000 percent because there's nothing to stop them?
That's no market - that's extortion, plain and simple.
> I'll get on repealing Medicare, EMTALA, and now Balance Billing legislation
The EMTALA has been unfunded for decades.
Hospitals bill $50k for a sprained ankle, write it off after they harass a patient to pay $5k for it, claim the $45k as a loss and pay $0 in corporate taxes because of all these "losses".
Hospitals support the EMTALA because they get these large write offs and federal, state support. Not because of the warmth in their hearts.
Balance Billing?
As long as we are talking about unethical principles, why don't we talk about withholding all cash funds that patients walk in with as a "security deposit" and deduct $150 of it as "handling fees"?
After all, they sat down on the chairs, enjoyed the AC, watched the TV - none of this is free you know.
> insurers honest
Let your patients worry about their insurers. Your patients, more often than not give the insurers a very hard time, for troubles unlikely caused by the insurance company in the first place.
The insurance company happens to collect the money they summarily dispatch to providers and drug companies: the business model they follow actually gains from them reducing their premiums, which they would very much like to, if they could.
Infact, the ACA has capped the amount of profit an insurance company can make which has reduced their interest in negotiating better provider rates.
Here's a diagram from a very detailed post I wrote: https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-d68aea3ca1e466f166752e...
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-private-healthcare-in-the-US-so...
Further, we are medicolegally liable for all care we provide even if we don't get a dime.
That was the original intent of going out of network; we'd tell the patients "we don't accept your insurance because we could not come to an agreement; if you'd like to continue, we can see you but it will be billed to you. We'd appreciate you telling them you want to see us as a subscriber"
However, with the corporatization of medicine, the individual decision making has been lost.