Because the government is a poor shopper and what they pay the hospitals sets the floor for the rest of us.

I bet you a majority of hospital administrators would prefer subscription revenue to fee for service. Their cost are mostly fixed and fixing the income stream would be much more efficient for them and will allow customers to better shop for hospital services.

You act like no one can operate on subscription services. That is crazy. There are unforeseen cost to every subscription based business.

You probably do not want it to be easier for consumers to shop healthcare.

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Posted by Hopeful Doc

Member since Sep 2010

15058 posts

Posted on 2/22/17 at 3:09 pm to I B Freeman

quote:
Their cost are mostly fixed

Got a link there? Costs are far from fixed and highly variable on the number of patients present at any one time, which fluctuates week to week, month to month and year to year. Staffing is constantly moved to attempt to match costs and revenues, and you're talking about an industry that currently operates at about a 1% profit margin.

quote:
Because the government is a poor shopper and what they pay the hospitals sets the floor for the rest of us.

Your stance: the government currently sets the floor for pricing and doesn't do a good job of it, so the government should mandate that you can't pay for only what you use anymore, and an entire third party industry should be dissolved...Am I understanding you correctly?

quote:
You act like no one can operate on subscription services. That is crazy. There are unforeseen cost to every subscription based business.

I am not acting like no one can operate on a subscription based service. I'm arguing that hopsitals in the USA should not operate on a subscription service because it's a poor plan.
We agree that the billing/reimbursement scheme that exists today is, at best, silly. If you're going to make radical government-centric change, why not suggest that insurance companies have to reimburse providers and hospitals the same for any given charge? That is, hospital admission done by me for Blue Cross at Our Lady of Example gets $200 but when done by Hopeless Doc at State Owned hospital, blue Cross now only pays $180. Wouldn't leveling the reimbursement structure, allowing physicians/hospitals to share and discuss fee schedules, and allowing a published, up-front "cash pay" price in an essential "menu book" to patients be preferred?