September 18, 201313 yr Interesting video. Shoots my obesity argument all to hell. His First 4 Sentences Are Interesting. The 5th Blew My Mind. And Made Me A Little Sick.
September 19, 201313 yr Author He throws out alot of facts, I would be curious how accurate they all are. He has links to his sources below the video.
September 19, 201313 yr Spot on. My advice is to start with the biggest fish. And those are insurance companies. And then gnaw on drug companies. Then you'll see fees secondarily fall at the hospital. It's a vicious cycle that has grown to enormous proportions. But Obama's got this. Not worried.
September 19, 201313 yr Well I'm in Mexico right now. Any guess on how cheap the meds are down here?.
September 19, 201313 yr Well I'm in Mexico right now. Any guess on how cheap the meds are down here?.Any guess on how efficacious and safe they are in Mexico ?
September 19, 201313 yr Author Well I'm in Mexico right now. Any guess on how cheap the meds are down here?. I know how cheap care was for my toe, and it went fine (minor issue). I have visited hospitals there as well. Merida was a very big city, so I only have that to go off of. The hospitals had patients in the hall way. How the care was, I couldn't judge. I know that a medical student there has it just as tough as a medical student here. People everywhere want to keep their neighbors healthy.
September 19, 201313 yr I liked his premise. Would love to read a paper on that rather than have it bombard me so fast but it was a worthwhile piece.
September 19, 201313 yr I liked his premise. Would love to read a paper on that rather than have it bombard me so fast but it was a worthwhile piece. Same here. When someone bombards you with facts so quick, I wonder if it is done so you don't have time to take a second and consider each fact thrown in your face. Not outright saying the guy is lying, just the way it is delivered makes me somewhat skeptical similar to a fast talking salesman. I think before checking the links I would first have to watch the video five times to make sure I got all the facts written down first. Also, I haven't had a chance to read the links first but I tend to like to verify the credibility of a site first before taking what it says to heart. Let's face, anyone can throw up a website, doesn't mean its info is correct.
September 19, 201313 yr Same here. When someone bombards you with facts so quick, I wonder if it is done so you don't have time to take a second and consider each fact thrown in your face. Not outright saying the guy is lying, just the way it is delivered makes me somewhat skeptical similar to a fast talking salesman. I think before checking the links I would first have to watch the video five times to make sure I got all the facts written down first. Also, I haven't had a chance to read the links first but I tend to like to verify the credibility of a site first before taking what it says to heart. Let's face, anyone can throw up a website, doesn't mean its info is correct. Without digging through old posts, I've linked to handful of those statistics before. The cross-country comparisons usually come from the OECD (healthcare spending per GDP), WHO (measurable outcomes like infant mortality, life expectancy, cancer survival, etc.), and international polling firms, like Gallup, that ask how individuals in each country rate their satisfaction with their healthcare. I'm guessing the the costs of different procedures in each country came from this, but it isn't terribly surprising as the costs of procedures in the United States fluctuate tremendously depending on region and insurance (hospitals over inflate costs and insurance companies negotiate them down, so true costs are hard to determine and makes everything way more expensive, which is what he said). Medicare is able to do this, which is why he mentioned that. I imagine the most controversial thing he cited was how little affect tort reform had in Texas on health spending, and I imagine that's largely because of how politicized that debate is, not the accuracy of the information. Overall his rant passes the eye test, it's just what conclusions you reach based on that information that spark the debates, as this forum during Obamacare's drafting can attest.
September 19, 201313 yr Seems correct. No one is in charge of negotiating pricing. In the current 'system' you would think Insurance companies do this. But not well. Its easier to raise rates. And with AHCA this is even more the case since before if rates were too high people could just not get insurance (granted that is not good). But with AHCA now you HAVE to get insurance - no matter the cost - by law. You think insurance companies are motivated to negotiate rates better or more aggressively under AHCA? Heck no. They now have a market that is legally forced to buy their product. As an individual I did try to negotiate after my son had a $4,000 tummy ache and spent a couple of hours in an emergency room. 2 MRIs and some saline solutions later - over $4,000 in cost. I got no help from the insurance function and certainly none from the hospital. At least we did not do an emergency appendectomy that night (and that was recommended). So I found that (like he said) individual attempts to 'control cost' are worthless. 'Inelastic market' - he hit that nail on the head. How true.
September 19, 201313 yr I'm not sure what some of you are referring to with regard to pricing. Are you talking about patients/insurance companies debating pricing? Or are you talking about physicians/hospitals arguing pricing? Because if you are saying that the latter doesn't negotiate rate of payment for service, you would be mistaken. Clarify for me.
September 19, 201313 yr I'm not sure what some of you are referring to with regard to pricing. Are you talking about patients/insurance companies debating pricing? Or are you talking about physicians/hospitals arguing pricing? Because if you are saying that the latter doesn't negotiate rate of payment for service, you would be mistaken. Clarify for me. From looking at invoices it looks like insurance companies negotiate 'discounts' off price lists - not absolute pricing. And those discounts look unrealistically impressive on the surface. But the starting points (rack rate) seems simply insane to start with - somewhat like the video indicates. But you are given a 50% discount on a service the insurance company can report to the business or individuals what a great discount they have gotten in their 'network'. So they look like heros. But if the starting point is crazy high to start with it just seems to show that the system truly is broken. Either there is a lot of fat in the base pricing or no one really knows the real cost and just keeps raising it each year to ensure they are covered. Almost every service or line item seems to have the standard code that medicare or medicade uses. But in looking around it seemed there was no benchmark for those codes and their cost. Or it varied widely making it hard to determine what it 'should be'. I think we need an Edmunds or KBB for medical services so that we can see what the 'dealer invoice' on services are.
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