I summarize it with one word after talking to a hospital billing manager. Subsidized costs. If you cant pay someone else will be receive marked up prices. On top of that and bear with me, but the way health insurance works feels like you gotta be in the right “mob family” where each provider is different in leverage in conjunction with which employer you work for. They can just take hospitals out of their “network” if they dont lower costs, so small businesses dont get this level of leverage, but employers with large numbers of employees do. You could have someone with a drastically lower bill just because of where they work, not even related to how much they make mind you.

It all goes back to your healthcare costs being subsidized by those who are left with the crappy end of the stick. I think transparency in hospital billing is drastically necessary. If not for every single surgery out there at least for all the really standard things that arent so complicated.

I am not a doctor. I think healthcare can be fixed without throwing more government money at it, but we need people to understand it better and work out how to bring costs down.

If you are not aware yet, if you think you need to go to the ER think about what you NEED, is your arm broken? This sounds crazy but find a lab that will xray your arm. It will cost way less, and sometimes the insurance will pay the full cost of labs for you since you saved them a fortune. It sounds dumb, but it could save you so much financially. If you are in more urgent needs dont waste any time go get the care you need.

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joe_the_user a day ago | parent | next [-]

If you are not aware yet, if you think you need to go to the ER think about what you NEED, is your arm broken?

Just noticed this comment. Wow, free ideology seems to turn people into monsters. "No you" (in kids voice). You diagnose your own heart-attack/kidney-failure/etc. I'll take a professional.

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giancarlostoro a day ago | parent [-]

What I mean is, is it something where you know you need an xray, but arent like bleeding out, etc if you're unsure, just go to a professional, but if you are 100% confident you can save yourself the headache of hospital billing, definitely do.

	▲	joe_the_user a day ago \| parent [-]
		No one is 100% sure of medical diagnosis, jeesh. Quite a few people ignore the symptoms of serious diseases until its too late and others go in for minor things. Not even medical doctors can sure of a diagnosis, where of themselves or others. And the average person lacks the knowledge of a doctor.

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joe_the_user a day ago | parent | prev [-]

I disagree with your analysis. I think you are wrong.

Health Care is a natural monopoly like an electrical system. Basically, a large portion of health care the creation of infrastructure that everyone benefits from. An MRI machine or whatever is benefit to everyone since everyone might need it even if only some people actually use it, etc.

For that reason, the cost of procedures, infrastructure, etc, etc. are infinitely debatable and there is no true way to way to assign costs. And sure, the actual assignments are irrational but framing this "things are subsidized" has things exactly backwards.

Here's scenario - suppose electrical companies weren't responsible for maintaining their own grids and homeowners had to individually maintain insurance in the event of a pylon going down. Suppose if you didn't have insurance and could be tagged as the last user of a substation, you could in-hoc for the entire cost of repairing a pylon or whatever. This would only approach the irrationality of private medicine but I think it illustrates the situation. (and the finance system might manage to put that in place too if we're not careful).