Hospital costs can vary more than $200,000 for same procedure, government report reveals

You should see the variance in Houston hospitals. I was able to run a report comparing vaginal deliveries at all the major Houston hospitals and it is crazy how wide the variance is. Hospitals that people think of as having a name brand are able to charge more because they tell the insurance company they will cancel their contract.

Memorial Hermann is a good example. They can threaten the insurance companies knowing that people will switch if they can't access Memorial Hermann in-network.

 

Did Obamacare fix this? Nope! Instead of trying to encourage better communication between the doctor and patient, Obamacare did the opposite and expanded the insurance companies reach.

 

I personally remember several Republican amendments that would fix this but Obama killed them because he'd rather have people with insurance than be forced to pay $200,000 for a procedure. Thanks, Obama.

 

News flash: The hospitals are extorting the insurance companies and people in extremely vulnerable positions. Obamacare was simply insurance reform and it forces all to participate in greedy and broken system. If it was true healthcare reform, hospitals would have been limited in what they could charge people with private insurance---just as medicare already does.

Read what Justtxyank wrote. He would know. MH, along with the other mega-conglomerates, have driven the costs up so dramatically in our area that they're now offering their own health insurance plans to employers in an effort to 'control costs'. Hilarious. This is happening all over the country with different large health care chains.

Our politicians suck.

 

ehh wrong! Obamacare promised to lower premiums and increase coverage, a promise that anyone with a little bit sense would know would not happen. Expanding a broken system only allows more exploitation, which the consumer ends up paying. Increase premiums only means more people who could not afford it before certainly can't pay for it now. They are now required to pay a tax or get crappy insurance.

Which would you rather pay? $10,000 out of pocket procedure or 10% deductible for a $200,000 procedure?

If Obamacare concentrated on costs instead, then the costs of insurance and medicare would go way down.

 

This is what happens with third party payers, no one knows what's being paid, no one cares as long as they are covered, no incentive to keep costs low.

Put people in charge of their own health care dollars and this will fix itself.

Or the statist approach, top down price controls by some unelected ministry that decides what health care is worth.

 

That's ideal but unfortunately you can't shop surgeons on priceline.com when you just had a heart attack and you're being loaded in an ambulance. Pre planned procedures...I'm with you all day.

 

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/KoE1R-xH5To" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

Would that health insurance were limited to such catastrophic scenarios (that's the whole concept of insurance, a hedge against costly but unlikely events)

Today people think insurance should pay for birth control.

Would be like car insurance being used to buy your gas, dumb.

 

Totally anecdotal, but I had my first dealings with a hospital (Scott and White) a few months ago. Broke pretty much all of my ribs on my left side, was in agony and scared about punctured lung/spleen/whatever so I went to the ER. 5 X-rays (negative), 2 vicodin, 2 prescriptions, 45 minutes total. Said I didn't have insurance, just bill me. 3 weeks later I get a bill in the mail for $5352 (then I filed a claim). I have no idea if "Obamacare" is the answer to our problems, but I do know that the system we have now does not work. We can do better, and I'll leave it to people more knowledgeable than myself to fix it.

 

$200,000 will pay a mortgage.

 

so how is Health Care so much less expensive and yet is rated higher in satisfactions (and in many tangible areas such as life expectancy) in many other Countries? I think I saw that the U.S. rank 1st in health cost per capital while 72th in overall health performance.

yes, our politician do sucks... the one with bad ideas, the one that blocks all ideas, the one that have no ideas...

good ideas are usually too taboo to go anywhere it seems

 

Interesting how this report comes out under the Obama administration and no other administration bothered to do this..... Interesting......

 

Where did it promise to lower premiums? It certainly promised more coverage and it delivers. It's probably promised lower costs in the long run because more people will get preventative treatment instead of showing up in the emergency room with no insurance.

I'm not sure, maybe you don't have insurance, but I've never in my life paid more than $1250 a year out of pocket for anything. I've never heard of anyone with insurance paying 10 or 20 grand for anything but if that actually happens its completely absurd.

I thought the market and freedom of choice took care of lowering costs? Isn't that the mantra? Obamacare does work on costs. Have you read it?

Dad, I just broke my arm. Okay son, we can get a real deal at this hospital in Laguna beach, it's only a 23 hour drive. Can you tough it out buddy? Haha, if only customers had more freedom of choice.

 

Guess you've never heard of adverse selection or moral hazard before then.

 

I have experienced this. It's a racket, plain and simple. The hospitals charge whatever the insurance company is willing to pay (or whatever they can extort). Some of that is greed, some is to cover their losses (i.e., the uninsured). Insured folks, in effect, subsidize the uninsured via the most expensive method possible: the ER. In that regard, Obamacare is a step in the right direction....but I don't see how it's going to "control" either the hospitals or the insurance companies to lower prices/premiums to reflect the larger pool of insured. Anyone know?

It's analogous to most any other rate increase. E.g., back in 2008 when gas pricres were soaring METRO and my garbage company both added "fuel surcharges" to cope with the cost increase. Understandable. Then fuel prices came back down...and the charge was never removed. Not understandable.

Unless Obamacare has price controls in some form, it's just a money grab for the companies involved. (as was bloody obvious to any idiot) But hey, here in America we like getting totally screwed by the "free market" in lieu of more rational socialized systems. It's just how we roll.

 

We screwed up long ago when hospitals were allowed to become a privatized business. This never should have happened. As others have said, you now have several regional mega-chains across the country. They come in, cut workers (which is a huge issue that is not talked about enough), drive away key doctors, raise costs, dictate insurance coverage, and in general, bring everything down. To the layman, it looks good because said branch might have a good reputation. In reality, it's the worst thing possible.

I live in a town of about 110,000 people. Recently, this happened to our trauma hospital. They sold out to a big mega-corporation, headquartered 120 miles away. Several doctors left. They cut employees. They have their own insurance company, and are now rumored to be trying to set themselves up so that only people with their insurance will be able to be seen (without paying out of pocket) in any situation other than a life or death emergency.

There's something wrong with that.

 

Did he use a line item veto?

Rocket River

 

We till waiting on the GREAT SAVINGS that TORT REFORM was suppose to bring to Texas

Rocket River