Vermont cancels single payer plan. Fuck fuck fuck

[Wesley_Clark]

@Lucky_Mike

Bolding added for emphasis.

I used to say the same thing until I listened to a great NPR story on this. They tried to nail down pricing to reasonable amounts and demonstrate the absurdity of massive deviations between facilities located just miles away. But their investigative reporters learned a lot and one of those things is that healthcare providing infrastructure is not like SimCity. You don’t plant down a hospital or med center for a fixed cost in a city, region, or even a state. Each source of health care infrastructure has it’s own unique history. Some have endowments, some have charitable organization behind them, some are for profit, some are in massive debt for expansion, some a government funded, etc…

Thus, each one of them has a different background that effects their operating costs and, therefore, their pricing.

Then, after all that, we get into philosophy. Some are teaching orientated, some care orientated, others are service orientated and others are excellence/prestige orientated. Therefore, they hire and compensate employees and create staffing Tables of Organization to reflect their philosophy, thus changing their costs and thereby pricing.

Until we have a Simcity healthcare infrastructure system, trying to regulate an exact pricing is next to impossible.

Of course, there are egregious examples and I think education on this subject is a good approach to identify some of these and reign them in when they get too far off the mark. But, nonetheless, the first problem still remains.

Yes but our prices are still higher (sometimes by many factors) than other wealthy nations both in USD and as a % of GDP. There is something else going on for our system to cost 16-18% of GDP while other wealthy nations cover everyone for 8-12% of GDP. Also government sponsored pricing works in every other wealthy nations, it can work here too.

At the very least, hospitals and other providers should have transparent pricing so people can comparison shop. And there should be rules against changing the prices after services are rendered.

[GrumpyBunny]

@Lucky_Mike

I used to say the same thing until I listened to a great NPR story on this.

I’d love to hear the story; do you happen to have a link handy? (If not, I’ll check their site.)

NPR also did a story about transparency in pricing in Massachusetts, and has found that having such transparency is causing prices for some procedures to go down.

[curlcoat]

@Eonwe

What does that mean?

Not being sarcastic here, but most people who need any kind of health care can’t afford to pay for it on their own. So what does it mean “people who don’t intend to pay for it themselves”?

I meant people who don’t intend to pay for any sort of insurance themselves. But also their healthcare, beginning with basic things like immunizations and basic dental cleanings.

The whole system is set up (pre- and post-ACA) so that contributors subsidize each other, and hopefully at any given moment enough birds are flying so the ship doesn’t sink.

That word “hopefully” is the problem.

[Ruken]

I don’t think there is any health plan anywhere that is worth 11.5% of my income. When your state is small, it’s easy for people to leave.