Quote from WebWeaver on December 20, 2022, 7:50 am

This is the comment that I made in a Radical Elders discussion that led someone to post the article above.

I have heard good reports about Kaiser, but they are an exception.  I do pay for Medigap insurance—less than my health insurance was as a freelance editor a few decades ago, but certainly a consideration—but it does cover virtually everything.

 

I’m not 100% sure on ending fee-for-service, though I could see some sort of price controls; I know someone who needed treatment for breast cancer (lumpectomy?  not sure, it has been some years and memory fades) and was quoted (and I clearly remember these numbers) $11,000 and $600 for the same service.  She had connections to a hospital ombudsman to resolve the issue, but most do not.  There has to be a rational way for determining the cost for a procedure; that level of variation just proves that there is a major problem with the “system”.

 

My concern with something other than fee-for-service is that it is an incentive to do less to keep more of the per-patient payment.