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Fat Ogre posted:Yeah like I said car insurance covers that.... That sort of depends on your car insurance contract , the other driver's car insurance contract, your health insurance contract, and whether either/all will try and punt you back to the other. It's a lot more complicated and there's a lot of vagaries depending on which states jurisdiction applies. As anyone who has dealt with any insurance company ever can tell you, they will take every opportunity to pass the cost onto another party in the event of a claim. Car insurance aside, when you have a country like the United States who spends nearly twice the OECD average on medical care for worse results in every single metric with the sole exception of medical care for those aged 75+ (mostly as a result of cancer treatments and the like- we do do pretty good in at respect if you an afford it ) it's kinds of a canard to argue that personal responsibility has any real relevance on a systemic problem that is literally devouring the American economy. Like, we can discuss other non-single payer models- the German/Swiss model is a decent alternative if you feel the private sector should play a role as a payer- but we really get pretty much the worst of all possible worlds right now and it's not because people are going skiing too often.
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May 4, 2014 22:14
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There has actually been some movement at the state level to disclose price information publicly. Many states are creating "All-payer claims databases" in which claims information for some or all of the medical procedures performed in a state are anonymized and then placed in a central database, potentially allowing patients to find the 2 for 1 deals on brain tumor removal or whatever. http://www.apcdcouncil.org To summarize, proposals for the scope and funding mechanism for these sorts of things vary pretty widely by state. Some states intend to collect all data; others will exclude pharmaceuticals and outpatient procedures, and some rely on *voluntary* disclosure, which is utterly worthless. Some states are paying for these databases via taxes on insurance plans or out of general revenue, while others rely on private grants. This latter approach is particularly problematic for obvious reasons, and it appears that Colorado's effort has basically run out of money, which they hope to recoup by selling bundled claims data to private entities. However, Medicare does not allow this, although bipartisan support to rewrite the rules would probably be fairly easy to scrounge up, assuming Congress concerns itself with passing laws anytime soon: http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/02/12/276001379/elusive-goal-a-transparent-price-list-for-health-care I have mixed feelings about these sorts of things. On the one hand, I firmly believe that the healthcare market is so fundamentally different than the one for consumer goods or even property insurance that standard price signals are unlikely to accomplish all that much on its own. Patients will still lack the expertise to properly determine if they really need a procedure, the demand for end of life care will continue to be nearly infinite, and large hospitals and insurers will still exert tremendous oligopolistic power, especially outside of big cities. On the other hand, these databases are pretty cheap in the grand scheme of things and probably won't make anyone worse off, so even if expanded price information probably won't have the magical effects Econ 101 would indicate they might be worthwhile pursuits. A uniform, standardized federal system that leveraged Medicare's power in order to force price disclosures would be even better. But really, I'm hoping that Vermont figures out a funding mechanism and gets their effort off the ground soon. DeceasedHorse fucked around with this message at 09:00 on May 11, 2014 |
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May 11, 2014 08:55
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