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Medicare To Require Hospitals To Post Prices Online (pbs.org)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from PBS: Medicare will require hospitals to post their standard prices online and make electronic medical records more readily available to patients, officials said Tuesday. The program is also starting a comprehensive review of how it will pay for costly new forms of immunotherapy to battle cancer. Hospitals are required to disclose prices publicly, but the latest change would put that information online in machine-readable format that can be easily processed by computers. It may still prove to be confusing to consumers, since standard rates are like list prices and don't reflect what insurers and government programs pay.
Likewise, many health care providers already make computerized records available to patients, but starting in 2021 Medicare would base part of a hospital's payments on how good a job they do. Using electronic medical records remains a cumbersome task, and the Trump administration has invited technology companies to design secure apps that would let patients access their records from all their providers instead of having to go to different portals. Seema Verma, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, also announced Medicare is starting a comprehensive review of how it will pay for a costly new form of immunotherapy called CAR-T. It's an expensive gene therapy that turbocharges a patient's own immune system cells to attack cancer. The cost for such a procedure can exceed $370,000 per patient.
Likewise, many health care providers already make computerized records available to patients, but starting in 2021 Medicare would base part of a hospital's payments on how good a job they do. Using electronic medical records remains a cumbersome task, and the Trump administration has invited technology companies to design secure apps that would let patients access their records from all their providers instead of having to go to different portals. Seema Verma, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, also announced Medicare is starting a comprehensive review of how it will pay for a costly new form of immunotherapy called CAR-T. It's an expensive gene therapy that turbocharges a patient's own immune system cells to attack cancer. The cost for such a procedure can exceed $370,000 per patient.
I don't care who made the happen. It's great news. The fact that hospital prices were shrouded in mystery and you had to find out with a surprise bill (for thousands) after the fact had all the hallmarks of a scam. Let's hope those days are behind us.
No need, they'll just post stupidly high prices and your insurance company will negotiate the rate after anyway.
Hospitals overcharge for pretty much everything. Any prices they show shouldn't be trusted anyway.
It's another example of why insurance is nothing but a scam.
Also dental, and I imagine vision, too. Nobody can tell you what something is actually going to cost you out-of-pocket, because the insurance company will say "we'll pay this much", but when the doctor/dentist goes to submit the claim, they say "oh well we're only really going to pay this much, LOL" and the patient gets stuck with the bill. WHY IS THIS ALLOWED!? If it were anything else I'm pretty sure it would be considered fraud.
Old people vote.
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It's funny that the same people who believe it's too much regulation to require banks to disclose information about rates and fees are going to celebrate requiring hospitals to do the same thing. Government regulation of private industry was supposed to be bad, remember?
And, there are big problems with requiring medical providers to post prices: First, all medical providers have multi-tiered pricing. This is a "feature" of our "free market", insurance-driven health care system. The price you would be charged is completely different from the price your insurance company would be charged. For example, let's say an abdominal surgery costs $100,000.00 to an individual. That's actually pretty close to what your hospital would charge you for say, a gall bladder removal. That exact same surgery, billed to an insurance company, would be $15,000.00. For those of you without calculators, that means insurance companies pay about 15% of what individuals pay for the same service. In any other industry, that kind of two-tiered pricing would be illegal.
Second, posting prices really doesn't help the average person. Let's say your doctor tells you that you need cancer surgery for your kid, or your wife. Are you really going to shop for the cheapest price? If you actually have a wife or a kid, you know the answer is "No". Also, posting a price doesn't take into consideration what happens once you are getting a procedure. If there is any kind of complication, the price could skyrocket. If they open you up for a simple appendectomy, and they find your appendix has burst, that posted price will mean nothing.
The experience of practically every country in the whole fucking wide world has taught us one thing: If you really want to get medical costs under control, and get better outcomes for everyone, just create a universal single-payer system and let the government regulate prices. It's the only thing that works. There are no "free market" solutions to health care costs. After all, in a "free market", what you would you be willing to pay to live instead of die? If you've been stung by a bee and you'll die without an Epipen, what's to stop a provider from expecting you to mortgage your house to pay for it? Would you do it? You're not in a position to say, "Oh, I'll just go elsewhere", because you're in fucking anaphylactic shock and you're going to choke to death.
I'm sorry, but there are just no free market solutions to health care.
You are welcome on my lawn.
About 15 years ago I was working a shit job with zero benefits - so no medical coverage. My shoulder was hurting a massive amount and the problem wasn't going away. I went to a local medical service to have it checked out but could not get them to give me any kind of estimate of the cost for just looking at my damn shoulder. You have to just accept whatever they decide to charge you after the fact.
No other business that I know of can get away with this.
* it was bursitis
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