in my experience as someone with a couple chronic health problems, it's not that bad with less than stellar health either. I'm sure it's different for more extreme conditions, but since I wound up with insurance again I've had like three different insurance providers and 2/3 had me wind up paying more on my end than I did without it. I'm completely baffled that people think putting the US government in charge of health insurance will improve things. Then again these same people both want the government to confiscate all guns, while insisting the incoming administration is fascist so I shouldn't expect them to make sense.
Hmm... that's a little high. I'm sure she can badger them to lower it. 800-1k for each code seems more the real price. As a note, NEVER trust the List Price on Medicine in the USA. For various reasons, they have an actual Real Price they know, but the list price exists for negotiations with insurance companies. Looking at the Medicare Pay Value for those codes, you're still looking at the hospital is taking a loss at $600 in revenue on that imaging. Arguing them down to under 2k is probably doable, but that's at least a $1500 imaging service she got.
Yeah, the fundamental problem of health costs is that everyone wants to be treated/diagnosed with the most state-of-the-art technology, manufactured to the most exacting standards and with the best materials, manned by the most skilled technicians, at the direction of the best doctors, and they don't want to pay very much (if anything) for it.
The understory to all Universal Health Care approaches in the West is that they were implemented when Doctors were common and the Tech Revolution hadn't happened in Medicine yet. Doctors are less common for very stupid reasons and that MRI machine that Kirsche was scanned in cost between 2-3 million USD, in a custom built room that cost 250-500k, requiring upwards of 200k to install and probably 250k in maintenance yearly. Plus standard cleaning and supplies. The stuff ain't cheap.
