Posted on 12/27/2018 7:21:03 AM PST by buckalfa
Many Americans have left the hospital concerned or surprised at how much or little they've spent for a service there.
Well, thanks to a federal law, there will soon be more transparency on how much you'll be spending after your hospital visit.
Starting on January 1, 2019, a federal law will require hospitals to post a master list online for how much the facility charges for a service.
Often times, little to no price transparency can make it difficult for consumers to price compare.
Other times the final bill is almost never the same as the "sticker price" due to other charges such as insurance, and other discounts or premium charges, before a final charge is determined.
“The list prices are so high that the vast majority of hospitals don’t even try to collect list prices from uninsured patients,” said Benedic Ippolito, with the American Enterprise Institute, who has researched hospital list prices.
The federal law is being brought out as a measure to improve competition and help educate consumers, according to the Journal-News.
“We are just beginning on price transparency,” Seema Verma, head of U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid told the Associated Press. “We know that hospitals have this information and we’re asking them to post what they have online.”
But real transparency comes when consumers can easily see what they will pay to a provider based on their insurance benefits, said Thomas Campanella, Baldwin Wallace University health care MBA program director. He said some insurance companies are providing that information through price comparison tools.
“I almost see it being more of a political ‘look at what we did,’” Campanella said of the requirement to post list prices.
Ala ‘cart’?.....................
One of the best things Trump has done to date.
More than likely, consumers will pay no more attention to these than they do the mandated calorie counts on restaurant menus.
I hate obamacare, but it has a silver lining:
Because so many people became stuck with high deductible health insurance, it means that most of what people need is paid for out of pocket. This created a culture of a lot of people price comparing, forcing providers to say out loud what something was going to cost, forcing many to drop their prices so that what they say out loud doesn’t get them shot. :)
>>Starting on January 1, 2019, a federal law will require hospitals to post a master list online for how much the facility charges for a service.
>>
>>Often times, little to no price transparency can make it difficult for consumers to price compare.
Hotels do this (or they used to). I would see a posted notice on the back of a hotel room door saying that the price for the room fluctuates from between $59-$225 a night.
Does this mean as a 59 year old man i’ll be able to recognize and bypass the pregnancy test?
As I understand it, these are the “sticker” prices that almost nobody pays.
What would be more useful would be in-network pricing, after insurance is factored in.
A few years ago I received a bill from my wife’s hospital stay. (I had a 6K deductible) for $ 3,600.00. I called and said I did not feel it was right that I be charged more than an insurance company and that I was ready to write a check immediately. The woman said to please hold as she had to check with her supervisor. When she came back she said, “How does $ 1,200.00 sound?”
Twenty dollars for a Tylenol and twelve dollars for the cup they bring it in.
I got a bill from the lab for a standard blood and urine test. The list price was $1500. The insurance contract price was $75 and my copay was $5. How can any business have a 20-1 ratio between list and actual price?
I would like to see both the list price and the "usual and customary" price the insurance company pays.
Prices are what cash customers pay. You still don’t know what the insurance company is paying, which is far, far less.
A medical savings account makes a lot of this possible. The next best thing is a cash savings account,
An MRI for a recent hand injury was $3,000 at the hospital. $450 at the private MRI center.
My friend was charged $50 for a pill she never got.
Have hospital stocks fallen through the floor? No? Then while important, this move alone isn’t enough to really free up the market.
Eliminate insurance companys and premiums, develop a pay as you go free market system with portable health savings accounts. Health care will only get reasonably priced when the consumer watches the market and eleminates the middle man. Health care will never be free.
bmp
Indeed, hospital prices have nothing to do with the reality of their actual cost, profit, or availability.
America’s health system is a hybrid of Progressive ideals and fantasies, Soviet central planning, political pandering, and crony-capitalist rent-seeking and corruption. There’s not much connection to reality.
“Health care will never be free.”
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You can thank Government Indoctrination Camps (public schools) that your simple statement there cannot be understood by most people.
Nothing is ever truly free, someone always pays.
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