RyanCare/TrumpCare

[Maddy]

The 60% number is the actual price, and the "full fee" is a made-up price that nobody actually is expected to pay.

I recall reading somewhere that by having a "full fee" that virtually nobody pays, hospitals take massive write-offs on their taxes for purely fictitious losses. I don't know whether this is true, but if so, it's quite the scam. Can anyone verify?

[Mountaineer]

Oh the long gone days with no insurance in the not so small burg of Houston - $55 crown prep and gold crown (1968), $300 physician charge for all prenatal care, delivery and several followup visits for our first child (1969), and $7.00 physician office visit to treat influenza (1970). Texas, don't mess with Texas.

[flyingpylon]

There was a bill in the New Mexico legislature this year to extend the sales tax to food deemed to have little to no nutritional value that died a fiery death after a thousand special interest groups howled bloody murder. What a shame.

Who gets to decide what's on or off the list... the "experts"? Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.

[Libertarian666]

Oh the long gone days with no insurance in the not so small burg of Houston - $55 crown prep and gold crown (1968), $300 physician charge for all prenatal care, delivery and several followup visits for our first child (1969), and $7.00 physician office visit to treat influenza (1970). Texas, don't mess with Texas.

Maybe part of the reason that the gold crown was so "cheap" is that gold was price-fixed at $35/oz.?

[WiseOne]

Frankly I keep waiting for Walmart to open cash-based clinics in their larger stores. I'm sure they would be a smash hit. I wonder why they haven't.

That's because Walgreen's beat them to the punch. Here's the price list:

https://www.walgreens.com/topic/pharmac ... e-menu.jsp

Given that the local academic centers are charging $600-$1000 for a new patient visit and >$200 for a followup, these prices look quite reasonable. And it's not even pure cash-only...they still have to deal with the EHR, documentation, and insurance authorization requirements. Of course you're probably seeing a nurse practitioner with an MD hovering somewhere nearby, but for this setting an NP is perfectly fine.

Perhaps the way forward is that as insurance companies continue to increase premiums, copays, coinsurance & deductibles, more patients will opt for a combination of catastrophic coverage and inexpensive retail clinics for the routine stuff, and more doctors will switch to cash-only. They'll also start to question the evidence-based dogma that has them undergoing frequent screening tests and taking multiple preventive meds, for high prices and little (if any) benefit. Eventually we'll end up with MediumTex care. No political cataclysms required.

[farjean2]

Frankly I keep waiting for Walmart to open cash-based clinics in their larger stores. I'm sure they would be a smash hit. I wonder why they haven't.

That's because Walgreen's beat them to the punch.

In my city, it's the CVS across the street from Walgreens that has the clinic. It's staffed only by a nurse so there is a limit to what they can do. I took my wife there for company mandated biometric screening a couple of years ago and my insurance wouldn't pay for it. Had to be done by a registered M.D.

We did have an insurance friendly M.D. staffed walk-in clinic down the road for a couple of years but they closed up shop for lack of business.

[Cortopassi]

[Libertarian666]

Of course any device like that would generate billions in profits, so that comic is retarded.

[Dieter]

Kinda like if the inventors of digital cameras tried to quash it as they made their money on film development.....

[dualstow]

https://i.imgur.com/wFmSTSL.png

Pharmaceutical giant 'plotted to destroy cancer drugs to drive prices up 4000%'

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/healt ... 83521.html

[Tyler]

Here's one of the better and more detailed healthcare reform proposals I've read in a long time.

https://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=231949