What's fair? (Medical pricing)

[CarolAnn]

All the talk about "universal healthcare" gives me the willies. I have had health insurance for the last 8 months or so - and have never been able to get in to see a real doc yet! (I see a PA - a Physician's Assistant.) I've never actually laid eyes on a doctor at this clinic - I have to take their word for it that he exists at all.

But my insurance gets charged at the same rate as to see a full doctor.

I have huge bills of my share of the medical bills - well over a thousand dollars for tests I didn't want and didn't need, but couldn't get care for what I went in for without.

So - just how is this going to work? We can't get prices ahead of time to shop around. No one tells the medical profession what they can charge - the sky isn't even the limit.

I just heard that some hospitals are dumping homeless people on skid row because they have nowhere else to go to heal up (homeless shelters don't let them stay during the day) - and the hospital rooms cost several THOUSAND dollars a day for recouperation. Excuse me. Several THOUSAND a day for a ROOM?

I know eye glasses cost under ten bucks, but they can charge hundreds for them, in addition to the cost of having the eyes examined. My tiny hearing aids cost as much as a car. A 5 minute visit with a specialist doctor can amount to hundreds of dollars per MINUTE.

SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE!


Why can't prices be posted?
Why can't we shop around?

We're not getting the best care now - so who decided we're too stupid to make our own decisions?

How many people go on line to make sure their prescriptions are safe? LOTS do. And it sure is better than trusting your health care provider to make sure they are!

Why can't we decide where to have tests done? Or choose to have them done by two different labs if we can afford it? Or decide whether we want to have them done at all?

We don't need INSURANCE. We need CARE. We need to be able to afford it, and to make our own informed decisions, not trust the medical providers like they were some kind of all-knowing gods. They're not. They're there to make money, and lots of it.

If the medical market was like any other, those that were good would stay in business and those with crappy service or practices would fail.

[WileyCoyote]

I've had really great medical insurance, and really awful medical insurance. But for the past five years I have had - no medical insurance. Nope. None. At all.
Know what happens?

When you tell the doctor or the ER that you have no medical insurance, suddenly all of those useless and lawsuit-protection tests disappear. They. Treat. You. Then they hand you a bill. You put whatever you have down, and they bill you. One even issued me a "credit card" so that I made monthly payments to it (no interest) for far less than insurance was costing me. Plus if I needed more medical care, I could use the "credit card" as an "insurance card" and the bill would be added on to the previous bill - again, no interest.

This is a whole underground and not publicized way to get around the ridiculous bureaucracy of the current medical nightmare. You don't get stupid tests you don't need, you get treated for what you came in for, and then you get a prescription for the medication. You go to the pharmacy - and you can buy the medication all at once or piecemeal.

Hubby has no insurance now either. He goes in every six months for his blood tests, and then they re-prescribe his daily BP and cholesterol meds. No fancy crap, no unusual stuff, just pure common sense, in and out, 20 minutes tops.

People talk about insurance all of the time; they ask you "what if you get a debilitating disease, or cancer?" Guess what? If you get cancer and have no insurance, the hospitals and doctors are required by law to treat you anyway - and can't bill you. Few people know this, and spend their lives praying they don't get cancer - and when they do, they beggar their families trying to pay for it.

The more insurance you have, and the better it pays, the more diseases you will be diagnosed with. Guess what? We. Are. All. Going. To. Die. We are all going to get arthritis or aches and pains or menopause or all sorts of debilitating and frustrating problems. My doc says I am a medical nihilist - I don't believe in getting exams every three months, every six months, or even every year. I have lupus and refuse to take steroids. The most meds I take at 50 are vitamins. I consider myself a Darwinist - people get sick, and they either survive, or they die. And it sucks but it will happen to all of us.