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MHBDemon said:
Yes. Thank god we are now protected from the predatory business practices of banks and other money lenders.
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For real. awaken, I'm sure you didn't mean usury took care of predatory lending and other poor bank practices for good.
 
I'm aware of the bad actors like Wells Fargo, and no solution is absolute - not even nationalized medicine. But I would love to see medicine under regulations that prevent their current level of gouging. What medicine is getting away with relative to banks is orders of magnitude greater. So yeah, I'll take medicine being as "well-behaved" as banks any day.



American hospitals overcharge patients
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massively this neck brace is worth
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twenty dollars but the hospital charged
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him a hundred and fifty for this IV bag
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costs less than a buck but she was
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charged a hundred and thirty seven
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dollars these are real prices folks

....

health care industry spends more on
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lobbying than the oil and defense
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industries combined

...

Oh God so how do I stop it what do I do
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honestly nothing we need to go to the
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hospital so they have no incentive to
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change how they do business and
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politicians have spent decades arguing
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over how to pay the bill instead of
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asking why the bill is so high until
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they do we're stuck with this system
 
Good read. There are a lot of price distortions and I'm not sure more volume always equals a better discount. Payer mix is a big deal to and often larger payers end up covering more of the Medicare gap. Its a complicated and nuanced operating model for sure and anyone that simplifies it, likely knows little about it. Even without discounts, its amazing how much the cost of acre varies within a city, county, state/country.


I predict that the new cost distortion issue that will pop up will be around how PBMs price and rebate drugs. In a rare move, we might see the White House taking on big pharma / PBMs. That is a giant shell game.
 
The reporting is Trump will not allow Medicare or the VA to get fair/competitive prices.
 
 
WakeForestRanger said:
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Maybe, but they're doing it in a way that won't get as much coverage and the impacts won't be felt until 2019.

Unless uncertainty around the legal battle drives up costs and that gets coverage. Which Republicans will try to spin it as the fault of Obamacare. (Though any chance to bring up healthcare should be a gift for Democrats.)

Also this argument seems very weak but is a reminder of why Trump wants to fill the courts with incompetent crazies:

The lawsuit argued that without an actual monetary fine for not having health insurance, the mandate should be considered illegal under the rationale used by Chief Justice John Roberts to uphold the law in the famous 2012 lawsuit. Roberts had said that Congress could not order people to buy insurance, but that it could impose a tax penalty on them for not having insurance, which allowed the mandate and the rest of the law to stand and take effect. Without the financial penalty, repealed in the tax bill, the Republican-led states argued the requirement to buy insurance cannot legally stand. Because the mandate is so crucial to Obamacare, they continued, the whole law should be found unconstitutional too.
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Great conversation. A lot to unpack. This could go on mutiple threads. This deals with making our sickest communities healthier, and recognizing minorities are being actively targeted by Big Food companies towards cheap, unhealthy, addictive foods (everyday discrimination).
https://youtu.be/dv3_JADVLZA
 
Kentucky cuts vision, dental care for up to 460,000 people

Gov. Matt Bevin's administration cut dental and vision coverage for as many as 460,000 Kentuckians after his Medicaid overhaul plan was rejected in court.

The state Cabinet for Health and Family Services called the cuts an "unfortunate consequence" of Friday's ruling by a federal judge. Democrats and advocates for the poor condemned the Republican governor's move as rash and possibly illegal. The cuts were announced during the weekend.
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That is an impressive level of petty from Matt Bevin.
 
 
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/02/opinion/boston-subway-accident-health-care.html?action=click&contentCollection=todayspaper&contentPlacement=2&module=package&pgtype=collection&region=rank&rref=collection%2Fissuecollection%2Ftodays-new-york-times&version=highlights

Nothing new here, just an incident that highlights the tragic and ridiculous situation that our health policy forces on all those Americans who don't have the privilege of a good job with a nice benefits package:

Awful scene on the orange line. A woman’s leg got stuck in the gap between the train and the platform. It was twisted and bloody. Skin came off. She’s in agony and weeping. Just as upsetting she begged no one call an ambulance. “It’s $3000,” she wailed. “I can’t afford that.”
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