The USA is a dozen people standing in a fully stocked supermarket with one guy saying, “I guess there’s nothing left- we’ll have to kill and eat each other,” while the other 11 quietly grumble about it but don’t dare do anything that might appear threatening. Someone will be along to save them, surely.
Let say there is a doctor that charges $100 for a visit. They come too then and say “we have large network, we can provide many patients for you, but we will pay 20% of your price”.
The doctor still needs to get $100, because also needs to pay the staff and other expenses, so s/he raises their price to $500.
Now someone without insurance comes. The doctor doesn’t need $500, and is ok charging just $100. But if s/he does the insurance might sure them that the doctor lied to them and they only supposed to pay $20. So they are forced to charge $500.
In summary, that $500 is never paid by anyone unless they don’t have insurance.
You can check how much discount insurance pays by looking for “adjustment” column on your bill.
They purposefully use that name and posting the difference instead of price to obfuscate this.
What insurance is paying is the billed amount minus adjustment minus your copay and deductible.
There are other things contributing to high prices, but this is the biggest one IMO. If we didn’t have insurance meddling with the prices, the prices would be much lower. Still high, but at least something someone could be able to pay.
The markups on labs are even more ridiculous, unless it is some highly specialized test they are actually cheap to the point that some insurances don’t even require copays.
It was a lot of tests, to be fair, and the funny thing is that it wasn’t all of it. There was another $130 charge for some other tests that they did end up covering - but not without appealing. It wasn’t a standard full panel blood test that I had to get at my age (48) due to family history. But regardless, my Dr ordered it and it’s goddamned covered.
Yeah, I have labs I’ve been putting off for like 6 months because I know it’s going to end up being like a $400-600 bill. They’re just standard labs, CMP, CBC, lft
The fuck it costs 1000 dollars to get some blood drawn? What the fuck is happening in America.
The USA is a dozen people standing in a fully stocked supermarket with one guy saying, “I guess there’s nothing left- we’ll have to kill and eat each other,” while the other 11 quietly grumble about it but don’t dare do anything that might appear threatening. Someone will be along to save them, surely.
It is a scam pulled by insurance companies.
Let say there is a doctor that charges $100 for a visit. They come too then and say “we have large network, we can provide many patients for you, but we will pay 20% of your price”.
The doctor still needs to get $100, because also needs to pay the staff and other expenses, so s/he raises their price to $500.
Now someone without insurance comes. The doctor doesn’t need $500, and is ok charging just $100. But if s/he does the insurance might sure them that the doctor lied to them and they only supposed to pay $20. So they are forced to charge $500.
In summary, that $500 is never paid by anyone unless they don’t have insurance.
You can check how much discount insurance pays by looking for “adjustment” column on your bill.
They purposefully use that name and posting the difference instead of price to obfuscate this.
What insurance is paying is the billed amount minus adjustment minus your copay and deductible.
There are other things contributing to high prices, but this is the biggest one IMO. If we didn’t have insurance meddling with the prices, the prices would be much lower. Still high, but at least something someone could be able to pay.
The markups on labs are even more ridiculous, unless it is some highly specialized test they are actually cheap to the point that some insurances don’t even require copays.
No, it’s cowardice on the part of the American people who refuse to throw a punch
It’s hard to call it cowardice, when most people are not even aware of the scam.
It was a lot of tests, to be fair, and the funny thing is that it wasn’t all of it. There was another $130 charge for some other tests that they did end up covering - but not without appealing. It wasn’t a standard full panel blood test that I had to get at my age (48) due to family history. But regardless, my Dr ordered it and it’s goddamned covered.
I just had my annual exam where they did a full blood panel, an EKG, urine panel and it didn’t cost me anything.
True Cost of US Healthcare Shocks the British Public:
https://youtu.be/Kll-yYQwmuM
Yeah, I have labs I’ve been putting off for like 6 months because I know it’s going to end up being like a $400-600 bill. They’re just standard labs, CMP, CBC, lft