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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.
Dammit.
Price list... http://bit.ly/25Au4TG
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
and use cookies to tell if you've been there before and raise the prices?
just an excuse for hospitals to keep you and run lots of tests. happened to a family member where she spent a month in the hospital and was told she might have cancer only to leave diagnosed with a bacterial infection. and one of my kids. a day in the ER with an MRI and lots of other tests only to be diagnosed with strep.
people need to accept the fact that medicine is not perfect and doctors don't know everything and not sue anytime a diagnosis is wrong
Will be even better if they post patient outcomes too. That would be pretty significant data in determining whether cost of care correlate to results.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Here is the simple reality of the medical system. IT is full off overpriced and downright illegal pricing tactics. when people see what medical systems have the balls to charge you compared to other services around especially on a global scale... there will come a change. having a basic universal health coverage will be totally doable once people figure out they are getting charged $1000 for a dose of Tylenol and nip that crap in the butt.
Gosh. Having a critical healthcare service paid for by a centralised system that everyone pays into proportionally to their income from their tax, rather than work on a for-profit basis.
It's almost like someone thought about it.
Sure as hell wouldn't want a privatised police force, or fire brigade, or coastguard ("Excuse me, sir, did you pay your dinghy-rescue fees this month? No? Oh, sorry, you'll just have to drown I'm afraid, or we can charge you the Premium Non-Member Emergency Rescue Rate if you just sign here...").
Seriously, America, you're having the piss taken out of you by EVERY ONE of your healthcare-related companies (from insurance to manufacturer to hospitals to research labs) because it's just about money.
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.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
If providers were bound by a 20% price variation for any given service or product, the health care problem would be eliminated.
Imagine such a world. if you pay for something yourself, use your small insurance plan or your big insurance plan, the price would be roughly the same(from least to most discounted would be at most a 20% difference.
This would increase direct competition between products, expose more realistic prices across the board (usually lower).
Imagine the price difference now between the price an individual pays, and an insurance company with a million people.
Such a system would approach the price normalization of single payer without needing the government at all (except for the price range mandate).
Don't like 20%, pick another number that is fair. 50, 100?
Just don't pick 1000%. That would be our current system.
Indeed, it's not clear in the article where the rule and/or enforcement came from.
Also note this:
This would imply that publishing it to the public was already a rule, but something changed to require it also be available in "machine-readable" form, such as CSV files.
Therefore, this will not directly impact most consumers, who usually want a prepared list, not raw data.
Table-ized A.I.
you do know fire dept, ambulances, and coast guard will bill you for rescue right. if you were in general emergency and didn't do something stupid for it then most don't. However if you cause the issue through shear stupidity then they will charge you back. the coast will save your ass. but if they save you multiple times the same way, they start billing you.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
He signed an executive order named (IIRC) Promoting Healthcare Choice and Competition Across the United States. I work QA for a medical billing company, and we're working on adding "value" that Trump talked about in his campaign and has in his EO to Electronic Health Records. I have no idea how you do that since I'm not in product, and I don't envy their job. He also called for providers to share data between providers, which surprisingly doesn't happen today, to reduce duplicate and unnecessary tests. So far we've made no progress to getting our competitors to work with us. Even our own customers don't often use their own EHR to see if someone already had a particular test so there's a lot of duplication even within the same hospital system. I looked at one record last week where a guy had six testosterone level tests in a single month. It's normal to do that test multiple times, but you do it over time to correct dosages. That was I think about $5k worth of unnecessary tests for just one patient for one month!
Maybe this is a pedantic point, but European medical care is not free; it's paid for by taxes, levies, and various gov't service fees. The cost is still carried by citizens, it's just indirect and pooled. It's misleading to call it "free" without some kind of qualifier, in my opinion.
The ACA is a hybrid model that is semi-pooled.
Table-ized A.I.
Solution: Don't be an arse and use emergency services in non-emergencies.
P.S. Literally NEVER known anyone to be charged for their services. Ever. Unless it's 100% abusive (example in the news... one woman called 5000 times in a year, and they still only fined her for that very last time).
Emergency services don't fucking charge you, so long as you don't call them unless it's a fucking emergency. Welcome to civilisation. And, yes, "Sorry, I was sure I could smell gas" is an emergency.
Honestly... what stupidity. And in the circumstances described where it's obvious abuse... fucking right they fine you. But it's extraordinarily rare, and they don't just do it for being a concerned citizen.
and an ER price cap / must be in market for any ER service
Hey, nice spin.
They are preventing a small child (not toddler, he can't toddle, having never been conscious in his life), in a vegetative state, from being kept permanently in that vegetative state, after two years of legal wranglings with the parents, where NO OTHER REPUTABLE DOCTOR in the world has been able to suggest anything but palliative care (one tried, was thrown out of court for being an absolute quack - heard much of him recently?), and who has been on life-support his entire life, FOR FREE, WITHOUT CHARGE, EVER. Taken to court, the Supreme Court, the European Court of Human Rights and the European Supreme Court, and ALL said "Nope, he has no chance of a life, we need to end his life-support" despite multiple appeals.
Being held in a hospital ON LIFE SUPPORT that fucking morons are trying to storm to "free" the child, against the parent's wishes and legal orders, disturbing other patients (including children and parents in worse situations), harassing and threatening medical staff (who are nothing to do with it) and generally running up the fucking costs to the taxpayer.
P.S. Learn your fucking country's procedures. NOT ONE GOVERNMENT REPRESENTATIVE has any say whatsoever in if the child is treated or not (without life-long, free and constant permanent treatment the child dies, with it he merely never gains consciousness, and there's not a reputable doctor in the world that disagrees). The courts have decided. Many of them. Several times. More times than even people who seek legal euthanasia in another country require.
So... BOLLOCKS to your spin. Because it's utter shite and keeping a boy who could be in constant pain and suffering alive to keep his parents happy, at ENORMOUS medical, policing and legal cost... FOR FREE. He's vegetative. Brain-dead. Never seen the light of day. A brain destroyed from birth by a neurological condition that's entirely untreatable and will only worsen. And an army of doctors kept him alive by default without question for two years while the legal wranglings go on, and they may be ordered by a court of law to "cease treatment" (i.e allow him to die naturally, rather than sustain him artificially for his entire life).
It's almost like it has nothing to do with expense, but what's right for the boy, isn't it?
P.S. Look up the Bambino Jesu hospital the parents want to send him to. It's a fucking Vatican-funded profit center, scam-host and shithole.
Before you comment on that as a statement against the NHS, go work in one of their hospitals and see the doctors and nurses crying and fighting all day to save the child, and then being threatened, attacked and harassed in their own homes for doing so (My girlfriend worked in Great Ormond Street... same thing, about six months ago, similar case, the people "protesting" were fucking cunts just out to spoil for a fight, and even the parents were pleading them to go away. I think the child's name in that instance was Charlie Gard or similar?).
i will be sure to leave by rotting stinking corpse in front of a hospital so all their customers can enjoy the smell of death as they go in to visit the hospital
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Nothing is black and white except in propaganda.
Only a Sith deals in absolutes, you propagandist Sith!
mortgage your house or just punch a cop and let the system pay for it/
"Fake prices", there's something new for politicians to rant about on the twittertubes. And let's get X to pay for it.
Table-ized A.I.
In reviewing insurance bills for a recent uncomplicated procedure, the hospital billed a total of $65000 and the insurance paid about $8000 after prenegotiated discounts were applied.
The insurance then ran into a technical problem/mistake in which it was retroactively cancelled. The hospital actually returned their payment. During the year it took to straighten that out, I was facing $65K in bills that they wouldn't negotiate to less than about $30K despite the existence of documentation that they had been satisfied with $8K from insurance. Needless to say, I focused on (and eventually succeeded in) reversing the insurance problem.
I've heard that the real reason for this is so they could write off $65K if a patient doesn't pay instead of $8K. I'm not an expert in the accounting, but I'm sure in my case that is what they would have been claiming as their loss.
The experience left me with a solid belief that posting prices alone would do nothing. That approach will only serve to drive more people into the wasteful net of insurance.
What is needed is a truth in pricing act. Hospitals should be required to have fixed, public, non-negotiable prices that apply to all payees whether insurance or cash. If the hospital chooses to pay some of those themselves in indigent cases, that is the price they should be allowed to write off. This approach would make some true headway in getting the insurance problem reigned in.
Posting their false prices does nothing except bolster their already drastically inflated claims of losses.
http://www.drugchannels.net/
run by a person very knowledgeable in the industry. Short story is there is a gross to net bubble of about $150 billion which gets redistributed to every other entity (GPO, health insurer, wholesalers, manufacturers) except the consumer.
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
-- Will program for bandwidth
Needless to say, I focused on
The problem with USA health system. You shouldn't have to focus on anything other than recovery and going on about your life.
My own experience in Australia:
1. Had a hernia
2. Went to the doctor. He asked which system I wanted to be referred to, waiting list on the public system was 4 months. I said private.
3. Went to private specialist. He quoted $8900 including a week at the hospital, gave him my insurance number, he said that my gap will be $2200 after insurance.
4. Said fuck that went back tot he doctor and asked to be re-referred to the public system.
5. 2 days later I was in hospital for a triage appointment. Was classified as a very low risk so went in the 4 month queue and went about my life.
6. 3 weeks later get a call saying there was a cancellation do I want to come in for my op.
7. Went in the day after for the op.
8. 4 days later I was discharged from hospital with a prescription for painkillers.
9. Bought pain killers.
10. End.
Total cost to me: $3.50 for a 24 pack of strong painkillers subsidised under the PBS.
Yeah it could have taken 4 months, but I also had the option to have it fixed that same week with an agreed upon up front cost, but my cheap private insurance (which costs $600/yr before taking into account the $500/yr tax credits I get for having it) didn't cover that specific op so I didn't bother.
Hey, nice spin.
Sorry for cutting out most of your post (for brevity's sake), I agree with you completely.
It should be noted that Alfie Evans' parents are not rich people. In fact they're barely even middle class. Should Alfie have had been born in the United States to parents who worked blue collar jobs, the insurance company would have turned off the life support after the FIRST doctor gave a terminal diagnosis, let alone waited 2 years for the umpteenth appeal. That's if their insurance covered it at all. Under the US system, we wouldn't even know about Alfie Evans, he'd just be another anonymous infant mortality statistic. The NHS kept him alive long after most other systems would have given him up.
So allow me to echo the parent poster's sentiment. Fuck off with your spin.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
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.
Rather than trying to Find a way to pay for it; we need to figure out WTH is the cost per patient so high for such a promising procedure --- is it due to the actual amount of work involved, or is some company levying an arbitrary tax based on how much they think it's "worth" for those that need it? What are the complexities in the process that make it expensive to perform?
The cost of the process needs to be made reasonable to become a viable treatment option.....
Of course, if you don't pay taxes, eg you're a small child, or a pensioner, or a student, or unemployed, you still get the exact same standard of healthcare in the UK. People who are self employed are also covered of course, without them having to arrange private health insurance.
I'm not sure how a country where millions of people don't have access to healthcare can call themselves 'civilised' with a straight face.
You forgot to mention how much your private health insurance costs,
(which costs $600/yr before taking into account the $500/yr tax credits I get for having it)
You don't understand. In the USA, about half the population values "freedom" over civilization.
It's partly inherent in the "the frontier" culture, and partly from the rich paying billions to convince them inequality and social Darwinism is a good thing. Who knows, maybe they are the future Kevin Costners and will evolve gills to survive Water World. All the coddled "socialists" won't have gills when the world warms and floods, and the Gillites will have the last laugh. At least we get the first laugh ;-)
Table-ized A.I.
Brits tend to use the word "government" a bit differently than we do, applying it primarily to the equivalent of the executive branch. In that sense, judges are not part of the government, and so what GP means is that no executive branch official has any say.
NHS workers tried to save the child, apparently. This doesn't say it actually worked. However, I believe GP meant that they work hard to try to save sick children in general.
"There's not a reputable doctor in the world that disagrees" doesn't say there are no disreputable ones. GP didn't say exactly why the court threw out the quack. You're the one assuming that this was because the guy disagreed.
You obviously don't know anything about this case, and obviously also nothing about what a contradiction is.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The ambulance charge for my heart attack was something like $3K, which my insurance paid. I assure you that this was a bona fide emergency, exactly what ambulances are intended for.
I suspect that $3K was padded, but it does involve having a specialized and expensive vehicle on call, along with two highly trained people working a very stressful job, and having to re-sanitize and re-supply the ambulance afterward. (I know they needed to replace a nitroglycerin pill, and possibly blankets. My case was simple, although serious.)
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Nope, sorry. I pointed out factual contradictions. I'm not going to change his words in his long rant to try and piece together what he maybe might of meant that could have been consistent with his other bitchfest a few paragraphs up. Nor am I going to pretend British English somehow doesn't consider government officials government officials.
The point about the doctor being labeled a quack isn't to do with whether or not he is, but the fact that the government making decisions about care is the one determining whose opinions to listen to. The people fighting to pull the $$$ from a patient (because that's what it's all about, $$$) are the same people throwing out arguments against them in court. In the US we have a thing regarding a jury of peers for a reason. (In the US we have a similar problem with the executive branch not being able to murder people without due process guaranteed by the constitution. So they first just label you a terrorist, revoke your citizenship to remove the constitutional protections you have, and drone strike you the instant you're off US soil, are within 100 miles of a border or international airport, etc.) But hey, maybe you enjoy your government death squads.
And, again, you're using "government" in the US sense. You might as well claim that cars don't have boots on their wheels, so speaking of a boot of a car is senseless. If you get to redefine words to be other than what the speaker meant, you can create contradictions, sure.
Anyone who makes decisions about care (or anything else) has to make decisions about whose opinions to listen to. I don't see how to do it any other way. This is not about money (even less about dollars), but rather what care is appropriate. The people who worry about the money (the executive branch) and the people who made the decision (the judicial) aren't that closely tied together. This was not a criminal case that requires a jury for due process. Not all cases in US courts require juries.
Revoking citizenship isn't a matter of whim. There are protections. This FindLaw article describes the process. It is carried out in federal court, with due process, and is not a decision of the executive branch. (It also applies only to naturalized citizens; there is no legal way I can be deprived of US citizenship.) Citizens do actually not have much more in the way of Constitutional rights than non-citizens.
Do you have any cases of drone strikes being applied in US territory? Or cases of drone strikes as retribution that are not aimed at legitimate military targets? If not, I'll have to conclude you're being paranoid.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes