Tuesday, August 7, 2018

Real Efforts at Health Care Reform

8/3/18 The Hill:
Hospitals will be required to post online a list of their standard charges under a rule finalized Thursday by the Trump administration.
While hospitals are already required to make this information public on request, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said the new rule would require the info be posted online to "encourage price transparency" and improve "public accessibility."
Starting Jan. 1, hospitals will be required to update the information annually.
The CMS said it is also considering how to "allow consumers to more easily access relevant healthcare data and compare providers."
Competition in health care as a way of cutting costs?  Why didn't the Democrats think of this?  That's right, their goal wasn't reducing costs.

1 comment:

  1. Difficult to determine the 'cost' of a service. How do you break down the value of each individual's contribution in a complex medical case? I might typically see a cardiac surgeon, and hospitalist who manages general care, a night hospitalist who responds to pt needs after hours, a few-dozen nurses, aides, a few pharmacists and their technicians, radiologists,and on and on.
    I suspect prices are generated more or less randomly. The hospital management has a fair idea how much they spent last year, and weak guess as to how much they will spend this year, and estimates how many patients they will have over the course of the year, and comes up with 'prices' for each service in an attempt to cover expected costs, subject to insurance company and Medicare/Medicaid review.

    Thus, you get the bag of saline that 'costs' $500 to hang. No, it doesn't, but something else that they forgot to factor in does, and they have to make it up somewhere.

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