> You can't exactly shop around
The vast bulk of health care is by appointment, not a dash in the ambulance.
The vast bulk of health care is by appointment, not a dash in the ambulance.
It’s not shopping for a tv. You can’t choose not to buy. It’s often time sensitive even if by appointment. Pricing is incredibly complex as are the details of the product. Your average person does not have the information necessary to navigate the market.
How did we collectively decide that it's okay for insurance companies to overrule medical professionals?
All of that cost savings makes US healthcare cost double what it does anywhere else in the world.
If we want to hold down costs then we'll have to put a greater focus on preventative care, stop expensive treatments for terminal patients, impose price controls on providers, and stop subsidizing drug development for the rest of the world. None of those measures are politically popular.
Some states have recently passed laws which limit the authority of health plans to conduct medical reviews or deny payment for services that providers deem medically necessary. This will reduce hassles and expenses for some patients, but it will also accelerate the inflation of insurance premiums paid by everyone else.
a basic heart ultrasound cost me over $1k while my vasectomy cost me a $60 copay. i was expecting those prices to be flipped.
and don’t get me started on labs. i’ve gotten bills for basic screens years later for thousands of dollars.
you can’t shop around if you don’t know what you’ll pay until months after it happens. if you call the insurance company beforehand you wait on a static filled line with a call center in india, and even with the CPT code they can’t give you a straight answer.
All you gotta do is ask.
It works every time I asked.
This is why it's sometimes cheaper to have no insurance than insurance.
if you ask the insurance company you’ll never get an answer. providers are usually more helpful about what “should be covered”, but that’s not guaranteed.
seems like prior authorization is the only way to really make sure charges are covered but takes forever. but even then, if your insurance covers $x and they bill $y, you might get a balance bill in the mail.
point is, the market is heavily skewed against the consumer.
This is my main argument against private healthcare: there's no real choice involved. Without even getting into what a free market is and perfect information etc, the main advantage of a capitalist society is you get to choose what you like. Nobody chooses healthcare (at least, not the super expensive part).
Is your argument that there is choice involved in public healthcare? Or simply that it's not even a question?
> Nobody chooses healthcare
Yeah, they do. Root canal vs implant vs dentures, for example. Ozempic vs diet+exercise, for another.