It doesn’t help that the prices charged by providers are never what they expect to actually be paid BY INSURANCE COMPANIES if you are paying yourself, oh boy, you gotta pay the entire thing but and insurance company only has to pay the “allowed amount”. So providers have to pretend there is a discount for members of insurance companies by creating an imaginary price for the uninsured to compare it to.
Healthcare is all Kohls pricing.
I’ve wondered before if someone could start an “uninsurance” company which makes the same deals with hospitals that insurance providers do, but charges its customers almost nothing and just lets the customer pay their deal price. I guess the hospitals would catch on and refuse to deal eventually…
Hospitals would likely be fine with it. The health insurance industry would not though and would pressure the hospital to cut you off. It’s illegal. But they would do it anyway. You would need serious fuck you money to change this. And even then, probably a lot of Luigis too.
Scam company based on misery says misery secret to happiness
As scummy as all of this is, it is a real problem that most medical services and offices do not have traditional payment plans. They expect the large amount to be paid all at once.
The real problem is not having universal single payer healthcare.
And as a result of our ass backwards system it’s not uncommon for me to see 2-3 bills for ONE visit. Of course, each bill has its own payment system too.
It’s insane that this is the case these days, but I went through this years ago and ended up having to let the bill go to collections, just to get a payment plan on it. They even ended up discounting the bill heavily after a while and let me pay a reduced sum to close out the account. How is a literal collections agency more reasonable than a fucking hospital? (Also the medical bill was for an asthma inhaler refill visit to a small free standing ER which ended up costing >$3,000 for checking my vitals and handing me a prescription.
The problem with US healthcare costs is insurance. This includes, Medicaid, Obamacare, and Medicare, not just private insurance. Too much insurance, and not enough shopping around for lower prices, effectively as not having any competition. In basic economics, people shop around for cheaper prices among providers who should be competing among each other. This is basic economics. Why is that so hard for Americans to understand? More insurance is not going to fix the problem. Americans need to go through basic economics as high school curriculum, because their current education isn’t serving them well. They have no ability to understand causation and easily mislead by the corrupt politicians they vote for. Paul Krugman, for example, could not see how inflation could be produced by squeezing supply chains, and flooding the economy with money.
