re: Trump to force Hospitals to disclose their prices

quote:

---

$40 for Tylenol, actual charge from my mother's bill before her death. Medicare paid it but that is a problem.

---

Another guy touched on it; as he said: Medicare didn't pay nearly $40 for the drug.


There is the cost
There is the charge
Then there is the reimbursement. It differs from insurance to insurance. Medicare may pay $4 where BCBS may pay $6 and Humana may pay $2. These are fictional numbers and don't represent what I think Tylenol is worth. That said, there is the "hidden" cost of the inpatient pharmacist, nurse, and the supplies used to deliver the medicine - it's quite a bloated system, but these levels of redundancy are why hospitals are as safe as they are, which is overall pretty good. Errors happen. So there's an additional risk management team that has every error reported to it, reviews it, and takes action as needed (IE firing nurses or pharmacists that have higher than acceptable error rates or egregious errors).


The cash payer, though, gets a $40 bill. The cash payer is also a tremendously small portion of who pays hospital bills. Worth noting, they simply need to call and negotiate the "cash price" (much like the CMS and Blue Cross and Humana prices). They also happily work on payment plans and (from the cases I'm familiar with) don't charge interest on it.


The bill is bizarre. But it is a made up number, and no one should ever pay it. Publishing the prices goes a long way, but the system as it is would probably be much better tolerated if people understood it better. This will only help, I should hope.