College textbook isn't the biggest scam in America, healthcare is.

Some excerpts would be nice.

The Time magazine article linked in your link is absolutely mind boggling and eye opening. If you can read that article and NOT think the healthcare system in this country is not in need of major overhaul, you are clueless.


The scariest part is there is no slowdown in the large hospitals buying up smaller healthcare facilities and putting their name on it, thus shrinking competition in the markets. My uncle has his own family practice and is approached several times a year by the big hospitals in his area wanting to buy him out. He's not hurting for money, enjoys his work, and they refuse to allow him to stay and run the facility how he wants, so he always tells them to get lost.

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Transparent pricing would be a great first step in driving down healthcare costs.

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The quickest way to over-inflate prices for a service/good is to separate the act of payment completely from the service rendered. Or something. You get the drift.

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Transparent pricing would be a great first step in driving down healthcare costs.

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Yeah, that would have been nice when my FIL was in the ICU for over 2 months. That was over a $1 million medical bill. Luckily insurance covered most of it.

But upon release, he still had a feeding tube and was in need of a hospital bed, and insurance would not cover that cost. The going rate for a hospital bed rental was $250/week. They negotiated it down to $75/week though. But really, $1000/month for a bed?

What was the most jarring was the % of operating revenue that was devoted to 'charity cases'. I.e, the 'massive amounts of poor people using the emergency room and not paying' that we are always told is the reason why the rest of us have to pay the high costs. If not, the hospitals just won't be able to stay afloat. Even using their inflated chargemaster costs, it wasn't more than 4% of the PROFIT.

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Even using their inflated chargemaster costs, it wasn't more than 4% of the PROFIT.

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Correct. The inflation is for the underinsured. Not the uninsured. And for the profit margin.

Eta: there's no big savings there for Obamacare like we were presented.

I see it like this: if we're going to make healthcare function like a market, then it needs to be worked to function more like a market. Having prices available like every other good and service would be a good start.

Sure I like to hate on Republicans, but this is certainly an arena they have the best and only decent ideas. Look forward to hearing the replace policies in the next two years.

The hospitals business models are set up around a lack of transparency. They focus on networks and systems. You see a Mercy doctor, you go to a Mercy lab and get admitted to a Mercy hospital. And their acquisition calculations were based on that ROI.

Add in that insurance companies are content to operate with these inefficiencies because it drives total revenue. No bueno.