Supreme Court gives Obama second big health care win in ruling upholding nationwide subsidies

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Everytime I go to the dentist, they refuse to get my x-rays from the last dentist I saw. Instead, they want brand new xrays, wiping out half of my allowed Insurance money.
 
…and for the record, my family only goes to Catholic hospitals for serious medical, because I know there are no abortions taking place there. 👍
 
TEPO said:
Well, why should an ER visit cost $3000.00 to begin with? I notice that the ER staff over-treat as a norm. In Mexico, I hear treatment is much cheaper. But they dont do catscans as procedural for tummyaches. 🤷
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There’s a slew of reasons. But really, most of the time, the only people who notice are people who self-pay, because many insurances have fixed co-pays. What’s crazier, though, is that different hospitals will charge vastly different amounts for the exact same procedure - and, even within the same city, one can spend over twice as much for the same procedure at one hospital than another (sometimes the two hospitals being compared are less than a mile or two apart from each other) - yet hospitals are often allowed to keep their pricing secret. My local TV station did a report on this a few months ago - and still has this interactive on hospital billing:

krqe.com/hospital-costs/

Even though the interactive just focuses on New Mexico, the same concept applies nationwide. Hospital costs seem to be arbitrary - sure, some of it can be related to costs of added tests or costs of malpractice insurance, but there is no reason why two hospitals that pretty much neighbor each other should have such huge differences in pricing of the exact same procedure, nor is there a reason why hospitals shouldn’t have to publish their pricing schedules for their various procedures.
 
TEPO said:
Well, why should an ER visit cost $3000.00 to begin with? I notice that the ER staff over-treat as a norm. In Mexico, I hear treatment is much cheaper. But they dont do catscans as procedural for tummyaches. 🤷
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It of course depends on the nature of the visit. But reality is that for most people it is beyond their means and the hospital will write it off if they don’t have insurance. That write off is then added into the prices so the place can stay in business.

I think Mexico has both socialized and private healthcare.
 
Michael_Mayo said:
Including a $3,000 ER visit? And what about chronic problems? Medications?
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$3,000 is a lot for an ER visit. Around here, it’s about $700 mostly. That’s a lot unless you really need to go, but almost any hospital will budget that, and almost anybody can pay a budgeted plan for an amount like that. Most peoples’ monthly car payment is about half that.

Chronic conditions might or might not be “catastrophic”. If, say, my “chronic condition” is hypertension, it is unlikely to be catastrophic or require a great deal of care or medication cost.

Elderly people are the heavy users of medical care, and their care is costly. That’s why Medicare exists. People over the age of 65 and disabled people who qualify for Medicare can’t access Obamacare. Neither can people who qualify for Medicaid. It’s a strictly middle class, working-age program.
 
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