Posted on 11/12/2013 5:01:50 PM PST by grundle
Eliminating insurance billing cuts 40% of the practices’ overhead expenses, enabling them to keep fees low, doctors say.
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
When you pay out of pocket, you can see any doctor you want, and no one can boss you around.
Who goes round, comes around. That’ s how it was in the ‘40s and ‘50s.
trend has been to this for the last few decades. Has become even more so now with O care
Now is a good time for all kinds of better ideas and designs for health care to pop up. Entrepreneurs wake up and start your engines. Compete against the behemoth of government.
Wonder if they’ll bring back house calls.
If healthcare was completely privatized, everybody would be taken care of and people would have an incentive to take care of themselves. In fact, a lot of chronic illnesses and diseases like diabetes would decrease drastically.
I have been going to doc who didn’t take insurance for nearly a decade...He has saved me Beaucoup bucks...because he works for ME...not insurance Co or govt
“Eliminating insurance billing cuts 40% of the practices’ overhead expenses, enabling them to keep fees low, doctors say.”
Why hell yea it does! Also, if doctors and hospitals would just charge what insurance pays then many wouldn’t even need insurance.
My MRI last year supposedly cost, or was charged at 3,000 bucks. Insurance paid 450 I paid 200. If they charged 650 for an mri then I wouldn’t need insurance. Now, if I didn’t have insurance they would charge me 3,000. How fair is that? That is how people go bankrupt paying their medical bills.
Except the doctor I want is quitting.
Paying cash for an ordinary office visit is fine, and there are a number of primary care physicians who are turning to the concierge care or cash practice model.
But there are a LOT of medical procedures that the average person can’t afford to pay cash for. Labwork, surgical procedures (even minor ones), and some imaging are more than people can come up with on a regular basis. Many people have medical problems that need care constantly and paying for it is just not possible. This is especially true of old people who have a constellation of problems.
I work for a physician and I have a good bit of insight into what it actually costs to run a practice and thus what a doctor needs to charge to stay afloat. We get so little from Medicare and Medicare supplement plans that the doctor is already giving charity just by seeing these patients. As some patients next year lose their insurance coverage due to Obamacare and can’t afford to pay out of pocket for treatments, this practice may have to close. It will be a great loss, if so.
my great grandfather was a country doctor down in Warwick, GA. He took chickens, wild turkey, eggs and yard work for his services. They didn’t have health insurance, but he took care of people and was loved.
screw Obama and his control freaks. Bring in the bartering!
House calls would be perfect. Think about it. No office(except home). Very little overhead. Don't take any insurance. Cash on the spot. Most doctors visit, think about it, are not for anything particularly life threatening. Primary care physicians send their patients to specialists anyway.
We have a chiropractor here in town. Been in business 40 years. Yea, he has a small office. He and his wife. Charges 20 bucks for an office visit. He's made a pretty good living over the past 40 years or so.
It can be done and should. Sure would take a lot of pressure off the Doc's too.
Thanks for knowing how to express the plural of years when the prefix of "19" (or "20") is left out.
Now, if only others would learn the lesson that one does not make the plural case for proper names (and years) by adding an apostrophe and an "s." The "s" alone suffices nicely.
If you got Fedzilla out of the medical industry completely there are estimates out there that say prices would drop up to 86%.
Doctors gave up making house calls after they started making high incomes. Believe it or not, once doctors’ incomes varied as much as lawyers do now.
“But there are a LOT of medical procedures that the average person can’t afford to pay cash for. Labwork, surgical procedures (even minor ones), and some imaging are more than people can come up with on a regular basis. Many people have medical problems that need care constantly and paying for it is just not possible. This is especially true of old people who have a constellation of problems.”
I disagree. I just went in for a battery of tests, and the bill was right around $420. As it happens, my insurance was cancelled about a year and a half ago. Not related to 0’care, related to...never mind. I suppose I could have spent $592 a month times 18 which is $10,656. Or, I could have spent $420. which was a 30% discount for cash.
You or I can go to the Oklahoma Surgical Center and pay approximately 1/5th of nominal rates for surgical procedures. They do not take insurance. They take cash money. There are 2 takeaways from this.
One is: The medicare co-pay is 20%. One fifth. If you are a medicare patient and go in for surgery, you will be charged 20% of the total as your co-pay. Now think very carefully: What the hell difference does it make whether I pay the 20% to medicare or to the OK Surgical Center? Answer: Absolutely nothing. Question what do you get for medicare? Answer NOTHING.
Now there are a lot of people who can not come up with $50K cash on the spot but arguably, those who can, are in many cases older people. That’s not the point. People go into debt ALL THE TIME for gambling, stock market losses, harebrained business ideas. Peopl take on $50K in debt all the time, and it’s irritating, it’s a pin in the butt, but they do it, and maybe they take a few years to pay it off but it is not life-ruining, it is not the end of the world.
You may work at a doc’s office and have an insight into what it takes to operate such a business with the attendant overhead. But your view of that is absolutely skewed, and I say that without reservation, by the compensation rates for insured medical care. I saw this in my Mom’s last year, when she needed all manner of medical care. Procedures that were billed at $1327 and paid out at $58. Billed at $732 and paid out at $37.62.
The fact of the matter is that nobody works for free. When you add an insurance company into the picture, they must be compensated. When you add the overhead into the doctor’s infrastructure, the person or persons who do that clerical work must be paid, and the delay in receipt of payment from the various ins companies must be taken into account.
I recommend you view this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r9q1Id41wGo
The second takeawy from the OK Surgical Ctr is: Healthcare costs are 5 to 10 times their real world costs. And the system is designed to preserve this gouging, primarily by the insurance companies. never mind the incredible assault on liberty and personal freedoms implied and mandated by 0’care, as long as this is the case and the free market is foiled, there is no solution other the egregious cost shifting we have seen.
this works for routine office visits, but once you need surgery or hospitalization you have to deal with institutions
for’a lot of’those procedures many go to good hospitals/docs outside the us and pay a ton less, even including flights and recovery.
Doctors incomes vary a whole lot now.
Doctors have always make “high incomes” compared to the average. Even the “ole country doctor”
I know. My dad is an “ole country doctor.”
He’s been paid in fish, chickens, vegetables, and a whole lot of time nothing. At one time he was the only Pediatrician in 3 counties that took medicaid. Medicaid paid 13 bucks for an office visit. It has gone up recently. Until recently a Pediatrician was required to be at the birth of a baby. Paid a whole 30 dollars. Total. Doesn’t matter how long Moms in labor. When you are the only Pediatrician in town and you have 5 OB/Gyn’s how much time do you think he spent at home. After taking care of his own practice?
But, after 50 years of practice he’s still done alright. But he is far from rich. If rich means having lot of money. He takes a lot of satisfaction in his life’s work tho, and that means more to him than all the money in the world.
Means a lot to me too....although.....a larger inheritance would mean a lot too..
My experience with the system (which has been far too extensive in the past 2 yrs unfortunately) is that doctors costs are a small fraction of big medical bills.
On a $60,000 surgery the knife guy got $3500.
So “bending the cost curve” as Caliph Baraq likes to say is really mostly about other areas.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.