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I'm convinced American doctors and nurse practitioners take a course in school designed to deflect questions about pricing. I have asked so many doctors what a procedure will cost and they all throw up their hands and get all "aw jeeze I'm just a doctor I don't know prices". And just about every time its not covered, its a ridiculous fee, and they DGAF.
so then you ask the front desk and theyre like "call your insurance company" and then the insurance company can't give a straight answer. even the dentist does quotes before fucking me in the ass.
“See?! It’s because dentists are private practice! They don’t have to deal with hospitals and insurance! So everything should be fee-for-service!”
~ Every AnCap at every Thanksgiving
While it’s true most doctors have no idea what anything costs, the truth as to why has more to do with hospitals and insurance companies collusion. They agree to pay doctors juuuust enough to divorce their understanding of class from that of their patients. That’s why, despite not knowing what anything costs, doctors loath treating Medicaid patients because “They should just get a job and get off Medicaid.”
If you think doctors don’t give a fuck about you, it’s because they’ve been trained to see you as a leech. If you’re a business owner, you better believe they’re going to go to bat for you against the big bad insurance companies. You want a good, empathic doctor? Find a underfunded public health clinic. You’ll find them there, and they are, by design, the ones who will know what things cost and be least likely to help you out.
American doctors are complicit in causing current state of affairs in medicine. AMA (American Medical Association) is chiefly responsible for limiting the number of doctors to half that of other developed nations, causing American doctors to be the highest paid in the world. They are enriching themselves at the expense of the public.
It's mostly the same trick as the Ticketmaster/artist false dichotomy. People can get a convenient scapegoat to blame (insurance companies, hospital administrators) while doctors can get rich without a public outcry against them.
They'd really need a course to understand the pricing. There's the basic visit charge which should reflect the level of treatment provided. They select one of the level options and do not see a price. Labs could go to a different facility for processing and priced by a system into which the doctor has no visibility. After these and other charges are combined, they could be fed into some sort of pricing machinery that's so complex that hospital systems just buy products that do that pricing instead of trying to figure it out in-house. All of that yields what they expect from insurance. What insurance says you have to pay is a function of your copay structure, coinsurance, deductible and how much they want you to hate your life. Afterwards, the hospitals' financial assistance policy may come into play.
There have been some attempts to make all of this somewhat more transparent in recent years -- you can search for "shoppable services" to learn more.
$1200?!?! Wow America is a shithole
America be like "oh did you want to see a doctor, you need to spend $3000 before it's free, thanks for the money!"
For most people, American insurance is a discount card at best.
My company gives like 2 insurance options, one costs about 3k/year and wont seriously cover anything until you pay about 15k in deductibles. The other costs about 15k a year for it to immediately cover stuff.
Either way I'm getting shafted.
习近平，我的人民渴望自由。请发送东风导弹
Full faith and confidence in my barbor-surgeon.
You want to diagnose something that's bothing you? Sorry we only pay after it's too late.
The US medical system is fucked. We’ve let insurance and pharmaceutical companies interfere and make your health a “for profit” industry. Until healthcare is about taking care of patients and less about financial gains the system will remain broken
I've heard horror stories where nurses are literally scanning barcodes on medical stuff (syringes, vials , meds, blood bags) in the patient room to track costs, is this real?
Like imagine the perfusionist asking the nurse for blood for your dying ass and they're like "one sec... beep ...okay here you go, save this poor soul so we can recoup these costs"
A part of me wants to believe that it's a cool tracibility system that tracks hospital inventory and auto orders more when they get low. But from everything I've heard about the US I just know it isn't the case
I don't know about that, but I will say the one time my partner had to go to the ER, we had someone come into the room for insurance info before a doctor came in. Now, partner did not have anything extremely serious, but still
I was...irritated about that, to be polite.
yes, I've been in hospitals a lot lately and they absolutely do this. takes them a couple of minutes to be able to give you meds after they come in. also they're so understaffed that it can take 30+ minutes to get a nurse.
edit: the most mind-boggling thing was the hospital refusing to give me a UTI test after bottom surgery because UTIs from catheterization is one of the biggest sources of malpractice cases. I had a 104 degree fever from a UTI and I was having grand mal seizures because of it and they refused to do testing until my partner screamed at them.
My experience with American doctors compared to Canadian ones is that they also act like a salespeople probably cause they're getting paid directly for everything
They're constantly giving me a sales pitch on some medication or treatment while Canadian ones mostly lay out the facts and pros/cons in an unbiased way
Critical support to the people who keep my car working (at a reasonable price).
Amen to that.