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Started By
Message
re: Study: significant increase in patients who can't afford to pay full hospital bill
Posted on 6/28/17 at 12:59 pm to Jax-Tiger
Posted on 6/28/17 at 12:59 pm to Jax-Tiger
quote:
You never asked your providers what it was going to cost. Insurance was going to take care of the costs, so you just paid 20%, or whatever.
This is a significant part of the problem - zero transparency. I was offered a diagnostic test 2 months ago by my doctor. I knew it was pricey and insurance doesn't always cover it, so I asked both my doctor and my insurance company BEFORE having the test done - how much does the test cost and will it be covered or will I pay for it out of pocket?
NEITHER of them could tell me. The doctor told me to just do it and if it wasn't covered, the testing company would write off the rest of the amount and I would only pay $200. My insurance company told me to have the test and depending on the results, it may or may not be covered, they'd let me know after???
0
Posted on 6/28/17 at 1:08 pm to BamaAtl
quote:
Then why are healthcare/hospital stocks soaring
Because the market knows that the current mindset (stoked by you daily) is that the American people are willing to bankrupt the treasury, giving them ludicrous amounts of tax money, because "it's for the children."
Posted on 6/28/17 at 1:08 pm to Jax-Tiger
I remember, years ago, when I was working for Humana (back in the days when Humana owned hospitals), 60 Minutes did a hatchet job on Humana where they brought up the $10 Ibuprofen - they described it as a 50,000 percent markup.
Humana took out a full page article in the Courier-Journal explaining.
Their are many reason some costs seemed unreasonably high:
1.) They have to shift costs and charge more for some services in order to cover the costs of other services that they can't recoup. They had expensive imaging equipment that costs millions of dollars and requires people with extensive training to operate, yet it only gets used a few times a week.
2.) It's not just the cost of the Ibuprofen that they are charging you for, it's the fact that they have a nurse monitoring you for a bad reaction to that drug.
3.) Humana has to cover the costs of all the people who don't pay their hospital bills.
Humana took out a full page article in the Courier-Journal explaining.
Their are many reason some costs seemed unreasonably high:
1.) They have to shift costs and charge more for some services in order to cover the costs of other services that they can't recoup. They had expensive imaging equipment that costs millions of dollars and requires people with extensive training to operate, yet it only gets used a few times a week.
2.) It's not just the cost of the Ibuprofen that they are charging you for, it's the fact that they have a nurse monitoring you for a bad reaction to that drug.
3.) Humana has to cover the costs of all the people who don't pay their hospital bills.
Posted on 6/28/17 at 1:15 pm to Jax-Tiger
quote:
1.) They have to shift costs and charge more for some services in order to cover the costs of other services that they can't recoup. They had expensive imaging equipment that costs millions of dollars and requires people with extensive training to operate, yet it only gets used a few times a week.
2.) It's not just the cost of the Ibuprofen that they are charging you for, it's the fact that they have a nurse monitoring you for a bad reaction to that drug.
3.) Humana has to cover the costs of all the people who don't pay their hospital bills.
4) Insurers, and to an even greater extent Medicare, won't pay without documentation. (Aspirin might be a bad example, but for a lot of procedures you need a written narrative and the provider has to pay a clerical employee to write it up.) That documentation makes even a simple procedure more expensive to provide.
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