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.
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>>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.
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.
They must post in advance the real prices, with appropriate discounts for immediate payments and various group memberships. And then bill according to that schedule.
I can give another example ... Lactated Ringer’s solution for IV’S. The bag of the solution ... theine/tubing from the bag and the 16-18 gauge needle into the vein ... roughly $175 per set. (From an ER bill from 2009). My sister’s cat had kidney failure and needed fluids, lactated ringer’s, about the same time. Paid the vet about $100 .... for 12 bags of solution, 12 lines/tubing sets and 100 18 gauge needles.
Hospitals jack up the basics because they do not think anyone will look at the wholesale price of the supplies.
Just my two cents. (Or $75 using hospital math.)
This will make it a bit easier for average Americans to see what a HUGE sucking, drain illegal immigrants are on our economy.
Regardless what misguided FDR’s state sovereignty-ignoring activist justices wanted everybody to think about the scope of Congress’s Commerce Clause powers (1.8.3) when it wrongly decided Wickard v. Filburn in Congress’s favor imo, while this hospital law protects consumers, it is an unconstitutional expansion of federal government's powers imo.
"Article I, Section 8, Clause 3: To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;"
"In every event, I would rather construe so narrowly as to oblige the nation to amend, and thus declare what powers they would agree to yield, than too broadly, and indeed, so broadly as to enable the executive and the Senate to do things which the Constitution forbids.” —Thomas Jefferson: The Anas, 1793.
"State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress [emphases added]." —Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
"... the care of the property, the liberty, and the life of the citizen, under the solemn sanction of an oath imposed by your Federal Constitution, is in the States, and not in the Federal Government [emphasis added]." —Rep. John Bingham, Congressional Globe (See middle of third column.)
”From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.
Using terms like “concept” and “implicit,” here is what was left of the 10th Amendment after FDR’s justices swept it under the carpet in Wickard v. Filburn.
"10th Amendment: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
"In discussion and decision, the point of reference, instead of being what was "necessary and proper" to the exercise by Congress of its granted power, was often some concept [???] of sovereignty thought to be implicit [??? emphases added] in the status of statehood." —Wickard v. Filburn, 1942