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A comment on Why Americans Spend So Much on Health Care–In 12 Charts. Parent comment

Re:Why Americans Spend So Much on Health Care–In 12 Charts by chimeracoder on Tuesday July 31, 2018 @11:33AM (#17654026)
> there are other kinds of problems. You are in the hospital, you feel queasy after surgery, nurse asks if you would like medication for that. "how much is it?" If you even think to ask that, usually they will not know, and can't or will not find out for you. So you can't make a rational decision about whether to deal with the discomfort or not.

followed by

> One might conclude that private, free markets don't make sense in this domain at all, perhaps.

is an odd conclusion to draw, since the agent primarily responsible for the inability for providers to provide transparent prices to privately insured patients is, ironically, Medicare.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Why Americans Spend So Much on Health Care–In 12 Charts by gameswithgo on Monday August 06, 2018 @02:51PM (#17700435)
>is an odd conclusion to draw, since the agent primarily responsible for the inability for providers to provide transparent prices to privately insured patients is, ironically, Medicare.

I'm not sure how you can be so certain that is the 1st order reason. The pricing situation seems to often be obfuscated by our private insurance companies as well. When people have different insurance plans, with different back room deals on rates, and different customer out of pocket rules, or none at all, how is the doctor to know what your price is going to be? How does erasing medicare from the equation fix that?

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