Healthcare Cost General

Why is healthcare so expensive to pay to begin with?

I have insurance through employer and I recently broke my ankle. Surgery was $1500 (16,000 before insurance) out of pocket which makes sense given skills, equipments, anesthesias, and steel implant.

But for several visits just for a PA to take my cast off do a wrap or alcohol wipe down and look at it with eyes, totalling 15 minutes it costs me out of pocket of $150-400. A presurgery consult alone blew out $360. Three hundred sixty good damn dollars after insurance just to talk to the fucking surgeon for maybe 10 minutes about the before and after of surgery and procedure in general.

WHY is healthcare so fucking expensive?

Other urls found in this thread:

telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/18/nhs-care-among-worst-europe/
youtu.be/qSjGouBmo0M
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

Bump

Because you let insurance companies take a cut, instead of require hospitals to offer the insurance or some other system.

1. Obamacare (currently) made a monopoly were insurance providers have monopolies essentially in certain areas kind of like how gangs have turf were only they sell drugs. So these insurers go wild.
2. You pay more to provide for all the people obamacare gives free or reduced healthcare to. Had that not been the case you would have spent 600 ish probably out of pocket.
3. It takes a hell of a long time to produce doctors let alone other competent hospital staff and people who produce the materials.
4. Pharmaceutical companies have their own legal monopolies in the country. If it were allowed to buy drugs from, say, germany or some other developed countries we would very quickly see the drug and anasthesia prices drop and your bill drop.


The only people that should be making good money off of your healthcare is the doctors, not the hospital administrators and insurance companies.

But who determines the prices? Why does a simple visit cost hundreds of dollars just to have a conversation where not even a heart rate is taken?

The insurance companies do it to both cover the cost of other people getting very expensive treatments.


If it weren't that way, someone else would pay 20,000 out of pocket on say an organ transplant instead of 2 or 3 k.

It could be cheaper for all of you but only if trump gets the healthcare plan he wants through.

The prices are that high because that's what they can get you to pay.

Anyone who says that healthcare costs in America are related to how much it costs to give the treatment is an idiot.

Also not, most ins companies are required to do the 80/20 rule. Where 80% of what they get is spend on medical coverage and 20% is spent on admin costs.

What that means is if you pay 1000$ a month the ins company spend 800 on coverage and 200 on admin. When you dont use that coverage the ins company cant pocket the difference. So they raid the price to 1200 a month. Now they spend 960 covering you and get 240 for themselves.

Basically what i want you or anyone reading this to understand is that rand paul/trump healthcare plan would be a great fit for healthcare in america.

Single payer on the other hand would either, through tax hikes, take a lot more of your money despite not having to pay much upfront, but it would also five you a poorer quality of care and waiting lines to see doctors or use a diagnostic machine or get a procedure.

It would also ruin doctor salaries meaning far less doctors in the country and many of them leaving to go work somewere else like australia or switzerland to get godly pay.

...

>why is a system where half the people demanding the good don't pay anything, and the people providing the service are pocketing billions because the federal government wrote a blank check, so expensive for the people that do pay?
Gee, user, I don't know.

Your children are being allowed to die because nhs doesnt want to send money on experimental treatment.

Your wealthy go to private hospitals and pay out of pocket while you get stuck with filthy paki and currynigs in the waiting line. You are rated the lowest quality of care for all the people recieving healthcare in the western world.

Because you are paying for my health insurance.

telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/18/nhs-care-among-worst-europe/


America on the other hand doesnt belong on any list comparing it to other countries since 80% of the medical break throughs come from us.

We also spend the money for R&D that you won't, making the healhcare cost burden a little easier for you yuropoors

Because the government.

Because everything is corrupt. You can't ask "why" and expect any sensible answer. The rich and elite are evil.

Healthcare is expensive because of a lack of free market forces. The entire system is woven in a way which prohibits a proper supply/demand Le Chatelier's principle from occurring.

Problem #1: The true cost of healthcare is obscured from consumers. Our tax system includes all sorts of market distortions which encourage 'Cadillac health plans'. It is in your employer's best interest to pay you less money but offer an extremely comprehensive 'insurance' policy. The cost of this insurance is paid largely by the employer, but also in money taken out of the employee's paycheck, rather than paid directly by the consumer. So when a procedure costs $4,000, the consumer doesn't really see that cost and therefore can't be smart about shopping around.

Problem #2: Health insurance isn't really insurance. Insurance is meant to protect against unforeseen loss. However, in the US, insurance plans are forced to cover things like monthly prescriptions. These are not unforeseen costs, so 'hiding' their costs via insurance is only distorting the market and applying an insurance company's profit on top of the costs.

Problem #3: Even the savy consumers can't shop around. I can't get a cheaper, but similarly effective medication unless my doctor prescribes it. I can't go to a cheaper specialist unless my doctor refers me. I can't pick which insurance provider I want, unless my employer switches to them. And when most people don't really see the costs in front of them anyways, they're not going to jump through those hoops.

tldr; ((they)) 'regulate' and distort the market so that they can amass more shekels.

You can thank Capitalism for our high health care costs.

First off, the profit motive drives everything in anything that is "for-profit", and the vast majority of health care options are just that.

Big Pharma isn't after cures since you have no need of their product once you're cured, and they need to keep raising the prices and come up with new meds (that always seem to have terrible side effects) so that your doctor will prescribe them to you

Speaking of doctors, those who take MediCare/MediCaid money has constantly filed for more tests than is usually needed in order to pad their own pockets, by either getting from the gov't or from health insurance companies, when then pass on the increased prices to you.

Speaking of Health Ins, again your payment go into the pocket of the CEOs and other managers and little into anything health related. The biggest bitches I've heard about price increases since ObamaCare is that..

a) everyone must buy insurance - we do this for cars already, so I never understood the bitching

b) increases in costs year-over-year - again, this is to keep the profit margins high and more money in the CEO's pocket. Also, high profits means higher stock prices which keeps CEOs from being dismissed.

c) Junk plans - there is a push in the TrumpCare about putting in places ObamaCare plans and non-OCare plans. Those non-OCare ones will be very low premium because they don't do shit. They're low deductable but EVERYTHING costs and costs alot.

If you understood what Insurance does, it's designed so that everyone helps to pay for the few who really need it. Car Ins is a good example. Everyone has to have it, and your premiums help to oversee the ones of the bad drivers (who pay more as they use it, but also take up money that would be the Ins Co. profit -- bad thing to lose profit for any capitalist enterprise).

Well, thank you for neatly showing how ignorant you are.

Charlie Gard (the sick baby) isn't being refused treatment because the NHS doesn't want to spend the money. The parents raised the money themselves. The question was whether it was in Charlie's best interests to allow the American doctor to give the experimental treatment, and the family courts decided based on testimony of experts in the technology that the therapy had basically no chance of working and the prolonging the suffering of a seriously ill baby just so the American doctor could use him as a guinea pig was cruel and unnecessary.


>Your wealthy go to private hospitals and pay out of pocket while you get stuck with filthy paki and currynigs in the waiting line.
You do realise that I actually, use the NHS, right? I can understand why this would seem convincing to an American, but I literally had a minor operation just three weeks ago and guess what: I didn't have to suffer through filthy, paki-infested hospitals with sub-standard care.

>You are rated the lowest quality of care for all the people recieving healthcare in the western world.
this is just a flat out lie (pic related).

>Why is healthcare so expensive to pay to begin with?
>I have insurance through employer
That's why

The horrible truth is because 100 doctors are absolute fucking geniuses and close to a million doctors want 50% of a genius's salary.

Most doctors in the US are overpaid.

It's not really even their fault for complaining though, considering a lot of the bullshit they went through.

Other reasons include the fact that the US is completely cucked when it comes to negotiating with large corporate entities. Europe has ZERO problem shaking down large companies even if it's not fair but in the public interest, along with the fact that for some reason right-wing conservatives in the US absolutely love redundancy of suffocatingly stupid, redundant bureaucrats when they're employed in the private sector, and will fight to make sure we have as many of them as possible employed by insurance companies until some (r) can come along and explain to them the virtues of public-private partnerships or some shit.

You can thank human nature. People who spend years working their backsides off at university don't want to work for the fee some jobless commie tossed wants them to work for, and you can thank capitalism you have such great doctors and surgeons

While I'm at it, anothe reason doctors' salaries are so high is because it's too easy to sue them.

even the article you linked says the US has worse healthcare than the UK
>but you can't compare them because reasons
you must hear how pathetically desperate you sound.

>employers don't count as consumers, even though they're the ones paying for the product

oh go fuck off you pretentious limey, no one as the time to read that

we doctors (yes i am ONE, ALTHOUGH IN RESIDENCY) will remain high paid wether you like it or not, otherwise you can go fuck off to treating yourself

>The question was whether it was in Charlie's best interests
The parents get to decide that, not the government

They have 0 control over which medications and procedures you get, so yes. They're not the consumer.

And no, they're not the ones paying for it. You're paying for it with the work you do. They're wholesalers, not consumers.

except that some parents think regular beatings are in a child's best interests. Hell, some parent think never seeking medical treatment and leaving it all up to god is in a child's best interests. 'The government' (and lets be clear here, it's not the government or the staff of the NHS handing down this ruling, it's the family courts) does this all the time, and no one who actually bothers to stop and think about this for two seconds thinks this is a bad thing.

Because we effectively give the health care industry monopolies.

>They have 0 control over which medications and procedures you get, so yes. They're not the consumer.
they can switch insurance providers, so they do have some control over the medications and procedures their employees get.

And while in the larger sense the employees may ultimately be the ones paying for it, it is in fact the employers who are handing over the money. You could just as easily say that the employees aren't the consumer, its the customers of /their/ business because that's where the employees money comes from - or you can follow it along another step and say its whoever pays the customers their salaries. All of this doesn't change the fact that it is the employer spending the employer's money on the healthcare plan.

what is the point in having insurance if you're still paying out hundreds of dollars?

is this a common thing or is it employers being cheap - like do you have some employers offering more comprehensive insurance were you're not having to pay part of the costs?

I've got private medical care in the UK, the NHS is decent enough for most things but if I ever need any minor operation done I can get it done without having to wait - and have a private room with a big TV, nice nurses etc.. that you typically get in a private hospital rather than NHS one. However I don't have to pay anything for this aside from the £100 excess that is due if I make a claim in any particular calendar year.

Sounds like sick/injured care

The short story is
1) Regulations that limit supply (complicated licensing requirements, overly long and expensive medical school, drug/device patents)
2) Bureaucracy (the need legal protection for literally everything, need to document literally everything because the insurance companies require it, etc.)
3) Subsidy (poor people get ER treatment for free because hospitals can't turn them away, this cost gets built in to what everyone else pays, similarly medicaid/medicare tend to underpay and lowball and hospitals often have no choice but to accept and pass on the costs).

not really and not true in the US either

you don't necessarily get to take a kid out of intensive care in a US hospital either and try and random treatment you like either

jeez you're probably one of those retards in the US who doesn't even have a passport

...

because it is regulated

They can switch insurance providers, but they only have about 6 to realistically pick from at any given time, and all of the plans offered by the providers are effectively 'off-the-shelf'.

The best they can do is switch from Provider A's HMO to Provider B's HMO because the premiums are slightly lower for a similar group policy. They can't force an employee to stop buying insulin, or force a doctor to prescribe generics, or tell their employee they can't get a $1,500 root canal even though the procedure has a high probability of failure due to insufficient biological width and will most likely require an additional $500 extraction when the tooth could be pulled today for $200.

That is wrong, though.

I work for a Health Plan that administers Medicaid for a region here in PR. I can give you the two main reasons;

1) Healthcare providers in the US are FUCKING expensive. They charge a lot. Sure, physicians are better paid in New Zealand, but I don't mean just physicians. Nurses, Health Aides, Other allied professionals, they all get paid pretty good in the US, and that makes your healthcare bill pretty high.

2) The other reason, and this one has to do more with prescription drugs, is that the US literally absorbs the costs of reasearch and development of drugs of the entire world. None of the countries of Europe or Canada invest as much as the US in drug innovation, but once a new pill comes into the market, they benefit from it.

Here is a good video, and I KNOW is made by the total KEK of John Green, BUT he is actually right in this. So if you watch it, argument his reason instead of the usual meme responses.

youtu.be/qSjGouBmo0M

>inb4 meme responses

You are too young to remember how the mandatory vehicle insurance drove car insurance through the roof.
Also
>government regulations are capitalism
Full retard.

The price of the benefit plan at my company went down significantly this week and we switched to HRAs. The insurance company said it was the upcoming competitive changes that caused the switch. Best thing to do right now is to find a good BIG company to work for. Benefits offered by smaller businesses are probably going to be shit until things get sorted out in the white house. Good luck.

>they can switch insurance providers
Not in my state. Soon over half of the country will not have any choice.

It isn't an exaggeration when people complain about how fucked the system is after Obamacare. Today's problems make the coverage issues we had before look like a minor inconvienence.

My plan from work is better than usual plans offered to the general populace too.

In my state, one of the major healthcare companies is a subsidiary of one of the major health systems. The insurance arm avoids paying for doctors that don't refer patients exclusively to the parent organization's specialists, and the parent organization's doctors and specialists avoid accepting insurance from major competitors of the subsidiary. It's fucked.

wait a few months, then you will get the lab work bill (not covered), and the other half of the 16000 that the insurance won't pay because you were charged too much

Big pharma overcharging, too many middlemen overcharging, and patents.

Where's Healthcare Leaf when you need him?

>TFW healthcare in my country is horrible yet everyone around me still memes that its "free"

It's expensive in America. Countries like Canada have cheaper healthcare.