Unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically and financially (2015)

Re:Unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically a... by mtgx on Friday March 02, 2018 @08:48AM (#16501291)

It sounds like in the "free market healthcare" system hospitals are incentivized to get the patient to spend as much as possible. That's aside from other bad incentives of such a system such as hospitals not wanting to be transparent with their prices, insurance companies not wanting to take patients with pre-existing conditions, also wanting to cover as few conditions as possible, Big Pharma being incentivized to ask for as high drug prices as possible (while lobbying for a ban on generics and imports), and so on.

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Re:Unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically a... by tr0ut on Friday March 02, 2018 @09:11AM (#16501439)

You have the wrong idea. A better example of what you're calling "free market" would be dentistry or something like Lasik surgery. You can shop around and figure out the prices because they are very much apparent since you pay out of pocket for the majority of the former and completely for the later.

Would Medicaid/Medicare be "free market"? Why bother shopping around when someone else picks up the tab?

Insurance companies mostly reflect the costs of the hospital. If the hospital charges you $50 for a bottle of Asprin, so be it. ICD10 and Meaningful Use were designed for billing not really for health care. Those were federal mandates not "free market"

Pre-existing conditions is a lot more tricky than you think. The political ploy is to think of a poor person with a serious illness being turned away by insurance because they don't want to deal with them. When in reality it can be you're obease or someone who just did not take care of themselves period. You can imagine a group pre-existing conditions patients could bankrupt a insurance company. What if to be "fair" you were charged the same as a person with a pre-exiting condition. Say someone that smoked 2 packs a day for 30 years?

ACA was just a big initiative to add more insurance companies to the mix. Now it is mandatory you pay insurance companies.

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Re:Unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically a... by tdb7893 on Friday March 02, 2018 @09:18AM (#16501483)

The underlying philosophy of mandating coverage for pre-existing conditions is the idea that everyone should be able to have basic medical care. With that idea it's really not that tricky to say pre-existing conditions should be covered.

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Re:Unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically a... by tr0ut on Friday March 02, 2018 @10:32AM (#16502204)

I don't disagree with the philosophical purpose. Of course by simplifying the facts. You're leaving out the logistics of insurance companies that have to now take that responsibility on. Last I checked they dont work of the sake of goodness.

Better option would be single-payer. I digress...

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Re:Unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically a... by Cenk on Friday March 02, 2018 @09:27AM (#16501535)

I recently read this great article about this:

http://time.com/4649914/why-the-doctor-takes-only-cash/

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Re:Unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically a... by neonhomer on Friday March 02, 2018 @10:49AM (#16502419)

Here's their actual price listing. https://surgerycenterok.com/pricing/

It would be great if the insurance companies would get behind these kinds of prices as this is probably the same as their negotiate rates they pay other surgery centers. Seems like it would be a lot less hassle for them to process.

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Re:Unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically a... by rvail2 on Friday March 02, 2018 @09:14AM (#16501454)

You should look up the definition of "free market". We do not have a free market in healthcare.

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Re:Unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically a... by hackeraccount on Friday March 02, 2018 @02:25PM (#16504792)

Exactly. It's a non-free market and whenever reforms are enacted - see ACA - they make it a bit more like itself, which is to say a bit less free. And when that doesn't work what's the fix? - more reform. More like itself. More a bit less free.

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[dead]

Re:Unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically a... by Broken_Hippo on Friday March 02, 2018 @09:07AM (#16501411)

I'll take the socialist healthcare over the shit I got in the states, thank you. Sure, every system has its own problems and it isn't perfect. But I can get care. My yearly out-of-pocket is less than some folks pay per month for premiums, and definitely less than the average deductible. No more fears of losing a job and therefore losing medical coverage or going broke because of something out of my control.

Have you even tried some of these other healthcare programs by living in such a country?

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Re:Unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically a... by jessaustin on Friday March 02, 2018 @09:14AM (#16501459)

See irony.

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Re:Unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically a... by blattimwind on Friday March 02, 2018 @09:47AM (#16501716)

I even threw in "free [as in choice not cost] healthcare", but I guess that's Poe's law for you.

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Re:Unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically a... by Asooka on Friday March 02, 2018 @09:58AM (#16501842)

Literally no other country on Earth has USA-model healthcare. The choice isn't USA vs USSR healthcare (I would pick USA even with the debt issues, and I've actually lived in a socialist shithole), it's USA vs anywhere else.

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