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Re:Many Hospitals Charge Double or Even Triple What Medicare... by gremlinsinc on Sunday May 12, 2019 @11:45AM (#19892592)
Agreed, maybe medicare is too low -- but then single payer MINUS insurers could beef up medicare too something like 2x what it now, but as a nation we'd still pay less total on medical (if hospitals mark up insurance 4x and the insurer marks up 2x the cost or more, that's 6x the cost that we're all paying for... Cut off 4x and tell the hospitals to be happy and downsize their operations, and get costs under control. Medicines should only be charged at cost for delivery, charging $40 for a single ibuprofen tablet is INSANE! It takes a nurse 5 minutes to deliver pills, say she makes $50/hour, that's like $5 labor + 30 cents for an ibuprofen, so 5.30 even doubled to $10 is much fairer than $40 for a single pill, or hell make some sort of automated delivery system that pops out medicine by hydraulics as needed and cut the cost even more.

With single payer the government could also put together some emergency grants/funds for hospitals that can't cope -- as long as they accept auditing from the government of all their processes/administration salaries/etc.. and follow guidelines take pay cuts to recommended averages, etc...

TLDR; Medicare for all will solve this issue, it will need to set the low-end higher obviously to compensate for where hospitals make the bulk of their money, but it'll need to hold hospitals accountable for better money management, and pay structures, and price gouging. Not to mention one of the largest cost savings : single-bulk-payer for drug purchases.

Re:Many Hospitals Charge Double or Even Triple What Medicare... by tomohawk on Sunday May 12, 2019 @03:04PM (#19893771)
Single payer or medicare is basically the imposition of price controls, which cause shortages and leads to rationing.

In the US, you can get an MRI pretty much immediately from one of many facilities. The wait time in Canada is pretty ridiculous, and far below the standard of care anyone should expect.

https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/waiting-your-turn-wa...

I've known people who moved to the US from Canada because they could not get adequate health care under the single payer system. Hospitals on the border with Canada routinely have to deal with the spill over from Canada because Canada's system does not have the capacity to deal with all of the cases (I have relatives in such hospitals who talk about this). Medical tourism to the US from Canada is one of the few options people have to get timely access to needed healthcare.

We already have an enormous amount of regulation and control of this area by the government and it is not working. Regulation can be like violence - its practitioners always seem to want to use more if it when it is not working. It's time to take a step or two back and reevaluate.

Re:Many Hospitals Charge Double or Even Triple What Medicare... by maxxxxx on Sunday May 12, 2019 @12:10PM (#19892726)
Agreed. If Medicare really pays too little then let’s raise that. But I believe that the current system is much more profitable so they won’t push for raising Medicare in exchange for eliminating the current pricing practices.