If the Government starts paying the bills would a hospital still charge

[Bandit]

five dollars for each Tylenol tablet. A person can buy a bottle of thirty for under ten dollars at any grocery store, but they don't let you bring in your own pain relievers. It is these type of inflated prices that are a very large part of the problem.

[alarimer]

1. I would hope not.

I hope part of this "reform" is at least price controls.

Insurance companies probably never pay $5 for a Tylenol. They have reached agreements with doctors and hospitals as to what exactly they will pay and the hospital will accept as payment. The hospitals and doctors then overinflate the prices for the uninsured to make up the gap.

[ejpoeta]

2. From what i understand, if there were a single payer system, then the agency that

handled all the medical stuff could work out a system of payments and such. Also, if everyone is covered, then there will not be a need to include the cost of the uninsured in every thing, including a bandaid or asprin. The five dollar tylenol is due to the fact that a number of folks in the ER don't have insurance and have no way to pay the bill.

[jazzjunkysue]

6. We'd become Walmart: Distributors would auction down to the lowest bid

for a regional government contract. That's the point: When hospitals know they'll stay alive, they'll have every incentive to drop prices, because they won't have unpaid bills. It's collective bargaining in reverse: Everything from bedding to scrubs to plastic tubes, etc, would get bid to the government as a whole. It would level the playing field between hospitals: They would no longer be in competition with each other, and wouldn't have to push away the non-paying patients.

We'd stop profiting from people's personal tragedies.

Amen.

[ixion]

3. look at how any other privatized industry deals with the government

and you'll see that they'll charge more, not less.

[Bandit]

4. No that is not true at all.

Compare Postal Rates to UPS or Fed Ex. However there is always the seven hundred dollar hammer to be found but it is not the norm. An exception rather than the rule..

[ixion]

5. Over-charging is the rule, not the exception

from what I've seen. Private companies LOVE government contracts because they can charge insane rates for everything the government requests.

One example from a bin of many:

I've seen large computing companies charging more than $300 bucks an hour for a software engineer that made $70 bucks an hour.

Again, one of many examples. Do I need to mention Haliburton or KBR?

[ejpoeta]

8. that's only when they get away with it. and it depends what the deal is.

it seems in war or things related to defense, this is more prevalent. the money spiggot seems to be never ending in that regard, and the companies get away with it. they wouldn't do it if they didn't. and i don't believe that would be the case in healthcare. it is not a spiggot locked in the on position.

[tsuki]

7. No, Mother had Medicare and Tricare for Life. For two and a half weeks,

she was hospitalized for pneumonia. The bill was over 102K. They were paid 19K.

Thinking back, I guess they will charge; they just won't be paid.

[Ocracoker16]

9. My mom was hospitalized in stroke unit for 5 days

The hospital billed the insurance company about $95,000 and they actually paid $11,000. I have always been intigues by how much hospitals charge and how much insurance companies pay.