President Trump signs an executive order designed to let patients see pricing information up front — before receiving health care services. Doctors, hospitals, and other providers would not only reveal their pricing in advance, but the now-secret amounts insurance companies pay them for those services. Could this TrumpCare transparency revolution trigger the reform that Republicans have been promising for years, or will it — as critics claim — create a “race to the top” sparking higher prices to consumers?
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TrumpCare Revolution: President Orders Doctors to Reveal Secret Pricing Up Front
President Trump signs an executive order designed to let patients see pricing information up front — before receiving health care services. Doctors, hospitals, and other providers would not only reveal their pricing in advance, but the now-secret amounts insurance companies pay them for those services. Could this TrumpCare transparency revolution trigger the reform that Republicans have been promising for years, or will it — as critics claim — create a “race to the top” sparking higher prices to consumers?
12 replies on “TrumpCare Revolution: President Orders Doctors to Reveal Secret Pricing Up Front”
This video won’t play for me for some reason.
Video isn’t working…
Having spent a short time in the accounting side of the medical industry… The entire system of billing is incredibly complicated, ridiculously so. Additionally, the COST side of things is, at least in my experience, pretty fragmented. I was helping with budget development and as we were talking the income side of the budget, I asked what the costs were with the associated procedures so I could build the cost side of the budget, and I was given an entire roomful of deer-in-headlight looks. The thought hadn’t crossed their minds.
This is slightly off topic, but all about health care…
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/google-just-obliterated-natural-and-health-freedom-websites-its-search-results-wh
I’m having trouble inserting link (first try at this…)
There is a “cabal” of the insurance companies, government, and hospital corporations that collude to keep market forces from driving down prices.
I have a sleep study done. Beforehand, I asked them the price without insurance. They said $700. I used my insurance – they billed me the insurance company much more than $2500. My deductible was $2500… I went back to them and got them to knock my payment down to $700.
Took close to a year and half-a-dozen calls and emails.
Shortly after ACA was passed, there opened several Express Medical Care centers that were not affiliated with the local hospitals. The thing that really set them apart were the price lists on the wall which showed the “pay now” price.
If you wanted to go through insurance, the pricing was higher to cover their extra overhead.
They had in office at any one time 1 DR, 1 Nurse, 1 younger nurse and a receptionist. 3 rooms.
It was intended for the I feel like crap, maybe it’s the flue or an infection. Better go get a Rx for something.
If you caught them with no one there you could be in and out in less than 30.
Later on one of the local hospitals opened an urgent care center near a populous part of town, away from their hospital.
Strictly to be an ER where mostly they did triage and treat broken bones and sprains. If you are just sick, they send you to their med express office across the street.
Both models are working very well. It is easy to see if you’ve been in any type of business that this keeps overhead way down.
Anything really serious you get transported to the hospital.
In other words the market came up with better, lower cost solutions.
If I’m carrying five people on my shoulders, no wonder my back hurts…
Cost consciousness and Quality are not mutually exclusive. The market for normal goods balances that equation according to their own needs and standards on every product they produce. Choosing poorly on this hammers your market share, doing it well gains you market share.
Most obvious example: American auto makers during the perfect storm of, 1. New emissions standards, 2. Energy crisis / oil embargo 3. Foreign (Japanese) competition in the domestic market. Detroit as a whole chose badly over and over again. They still have not gotten back the market share they lost.
Within the scam known as health insurance…if an actual provider (Doctor) were to raise their rates for any reason one of two things happen.
First – If they have a negotiated price scheme in place the insurance says, we have a contract too bad for you. If you don’t like it we will drop you as a vendor.
Second – If no contract is in place they will not carry you as a vendor.
What this will do is remove a lot of the leverage from both insurance and government. In fact it should place them at odds with each other once people get to look at Medicare rates versus normal rates.
The facility I normally use for health care services offers an automatic 50% discount on lab work for not using your insurance.