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US38 - Fair Hospital Pricing
| Hospitals shouldn't be able to charge individuals without insurance 5X what insurance/Medicare pays | |
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Description
Hospitals quote an outrageously high sticker price that is negotiated down by insurance companies and Medicare but is actually charged to individuals without insurance. The cost to individuals can be 5X or more what insurance/Medicare pays. This makes it so individuals are forced to buy insurance to avoid being gouged.
This makes no sense. The financial condition of hospitals is entirely determined by their deals with insurers and Medicare, and individuals are just a blip on the radar. It is unfair to charge outrageous prices to individuals. People in the know will tell you, "Oh, you can negotiate those prices down - just tell them you'll pay next week if they knock down the price." But it is ridiculous that people should have to haggle for fairness in what they pay for a basic human need.
Arguments
I've had bills that were 12x the final "negotiated" price for lab tests. The insurance company tried to weasel away, saying that the tests weren't for an accident or an illness, therefore not covered. Never mind that I'm a cancer survivor and we were testing for things that go wrong for former chemo patients.
Anyway, once the doc's back office went to bat for me with the insurance company the price literally came down from $1,200 to $87.
That's when I started calling my health insurance a protection racket ... I pay premiums to have them "negotiate" the bills for me and that's only if we strong arm them into doing it.
I've always wondered what the insurance companies had to do with health care in the first place. They don't belong there. They're what's kept us from having sensible medical care like the rest of the civilized world. They reap vast profits in cahoots with big-business medicine. If health care were socialized, you wouldn't be fighting those battles.
The reasoning behind this from a hospital's point of view may be to make it prohibitively expensive to not have insurance so that people will get insurance and make the whole payments process easier and more reliable. First, it's sad to think the payments process with insurance companies is the best option available to them. Second, they shouldn't be allowed to do that to their customers in any case. Third, with Obamacare forcing people to have health insurance already, they have no more plausibly legitimate reason for this practice. People who are don't have insurance face penalties from the federal government; they shouldn't face additional penalties from their healthcare providers.
Counterarguments
This is what insurance companies are supposed to do: It is clearly defined on practically all of their websites. The failure of a private individual to obtain their own insurance is not the fault of the hospital.
People have options already with haggling: Forcing businesses to act not like businesses will ruin them.
It is this way in many businesses for expensive things like cars, homes, and other things that would be considered "necessities." One haggles, it is a fact of life. Hospitals are a business like any other: They need to make money to pay their workers, do research, and all of the other things hospitals do.
People have options already with haggling: Forcing businesses to act not like businesses will ruin them.
3 Topics
Discussion
started
by GregOrr
on Sep 6
See our DailyKos discussion
See our discussion at DailyKos. General agreement.
started
by GregOrr
on Jul 25
With Obamacare maybe this is no longer a problem
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last reply by GregOrr on Nov 10
Health Insurance (1 reply)