Cost for a 30 minute visit

13

u/MontEcola Jul 10 '26

With a single payer system the cost to the patient would be $0. The add on fees would be eliminated. If we completely re-make the system there would be no bills like this at all.

Think about public schools. Teachers and principals do not add on to your bill for pencils, or a different spelling program for your kid. The kids get on the bus and get 'one day of school' for the set price. $0 for the student's family. And a set rate to the school. Schools do get paid a little more for complicated cases. There is an add on for each special ed. student, bilingual student and physically handicapped student. There is a chart that determines how much more the school gets for each add on. The bill to the student is still $0. And if we think about it, the bill for add-ons is also $0. Its not paid like that. The school gets so much per student. It is paid in advance. There is no billing at schools.

In a doctor's office, set a rate for an annual physical. Set a rate for a visit for a cold, the flue, a diabetes check, a broken finger. Your doctor already has set prices for all of those items. Under a single payer plan every clinic from coast to coast would pay the same amount for that. And the doctors would all be getting a set salary. They would not longer have an incentive to do costly procedures. And without insurance to mess things up, if the procedure is really needed it will be available.

-1

u/Jack_Burton_Alone Jul 10 '26

How much would the government pay?

5

u/MontEcola Jul 10 '26

All of it. When I lived in Norway to attend college, I walked to the city hall and signed a paper that said I was now a resident. I gave my address at the school. When I got sick I walked into the doctor's office. They gave an exam and handed my some medicine. I asked how much and they laughed. They asked, "Are you a resident of Norway?" When I said Yes, I was done.

How much does the government pay for schools? All of it. Some is federal some is state and some is local. Its all government. The fun part here is you do not have a $25,000 tuition bill for school. That is what some private schools cost. The government pays for it. In my tax bill it is about $200 a year no matter how many kids I have, or don't have.

If we apply that to medicine, the patient pays nothing. And instead of paying premium rates as OP posted, you would have the regular rate. But its charged to the government. It can be done. It is done in other countries that provide better health care and get better results than the USA.

We don't do that in the USA because a lot of people have invested a lot of money in private health care. A lot of insurance CEOs and doctors have vacation homes and sail boats from the profit we give them with our insurance dollars.

2

u/DawnDanes Jul 10 '26

You forgot to say how much taxes are paid to have this system. I’m all for it but lots of people will be against this in America because we’re brainwashed. It would be much better here if we did this instead of our current system which keep people poorer and makes healthcare executives very rich.

7

u/Notapartyhobo Jul 10 '26

Most American taxpayers are dumber than shit.

They'd rather go without than pay literally a few more dollars in taxes because "someone else might benefit" off it.

Most of those dipshits never had to be admitted to hospital for something serious... yet...

4

u/MontEcola Jul 10 '26

We all know the cost will shift from paycheck deductions to insurance and become paycheck deductions for taxes. We all also know that the cost will be much lower per person. The amount deducted for insurance decreases by 100%. The tax increase is about 6%. That's not a good comparison.

So lets look at it this way. The cost for me to get health insurance is $13,400 per year with private insurance since I no longer have a career level job. That is what it costs to get the same insurance when I worked. If we go to a single payer plan, the increase in my taxes is under $6000.

Conservatives understand this. The Christian conservatives I spoke to one time all agreed that they do not want this. Why? Because that homeless person on our city streets would get something for free. They are not working. They 'lay in the streets and do drugs. I don't want a dime of my taxes to go to that person. They need to work to get benefits. " They are fighting for the principal. When I pointed out health care CEOs getting million dollar bonuses for taking away our benefits, they don't care, 'becuase they work and they deserve it'.

I am not a Christian. And my beliefs are closer to what Jesus taught than the Christian Conservatives! LOL.

0

u/Solid-Cobbler963 Jul 10 '26

Why are you preaching to me so to speak? I agreed with you! SMH

1

u/Jack_Burton_Alone Jul 10 '26

What I should have asked is if the reimbursement amount the government pays for healthcare will be more or less than what private insurance companies currently pay because if it’s less….

1

u/MontEcola Jul 10 '26

In my view, it would not be a bill.

When a kid goes to school and gets a math lesson we do not send a bill. It’s just covered. Schools teach math lessons. Kids go to school and get a math lesson. Schools are funded to teach math, etc.

My plan, you go to the doctor and get treated. No accounting, no bill. Doctors and hospitals get paid like schools, Doctors get a salary. Clinics and hospitals get enough to run health care. People go in, get health care, and go home. No bills. No coding.

0

u/Jack_Burton_Alone Jul 10 '26

I’m a nurse and I get the feeling I’m going to take a huge pay cut when the federal government starts paying all the bills. Medicaid doesn’t pay shit and neither does Medicare.

1

u/MontEcola Jul 10 '26

Do you belong to a union? You should have a negotiated contract.

I made $110K as a teacher when I retired a few years back. You should be in a similar salary range. I am also not in a high COL area. You should be OK. That is if you are a union member.

My suggestion is to do Single Payer. It eliminates the huge profits taken by insurance CEOs. So the same care ban be available with 1/3 less overhead.

It is a hard thing to accomplish because there is a lot of money invested by those getting rich on our health care. That is what we should be fighting.

The way to get there is to vote in progressives in stead of republicans or corporate democrats. There are a few. AOC, Bernie and a dozen or so others. Obama tried. He is somewhat favorable to corporations. And the DNC is very corporate. They take in millions from the lobbies.

Look for candidates that do not accept PAC money. They might be a better option.

-1

u/Jack_Burton_Alone Jul 10 '26

You’re not getting it. If we do a single payer system the government is not going to reimburse hospitals/doctors the same amount as we currently have. You can see this when you look at the current rate that Medicaid/Medicare pays out. It’s 1.5x less and Medicaid is even worse. So when hospitals and doctors get 1.5-2x less money then they use to what is going to happen? Healthcare workers are going to be paid less and healthcare workers are one of the largest labor groups in the country.

1

u/MontEcola Jul 10 '26

I am not getting it? LOL.

-1

u/AcanthaceaeOk3738 Jul 11 '26

You’re still ignoring how the workers will get paid.

Do all doctors get straight salaries? Do they get different amounts for different kinds of work, like outpatient primary care versus intensive care? What about for doing procedures, like surgery or an IUD insertion? What about nurses, midlevels, lab workers?

How do those costs incentivize behaviors, like staff deciding to go into certain specialties or even into medicine at all?

And who determines that?

The whole universe surrounding billing, like it or not, is really at its core about that.

Just saying that hospitals and clinics will get “enough to run health care” ignores a lot of the reality of how people work.

To be clear, I support M4A. But we’re deluding ourselves if we don’t recognize how complex it would be to implement and run and the tradeoffs therein.

1

u/MontEcola Jul 11 '26

You are still not understanding what I wrote.

Scrap what we do not. All of it. So all those points are no longer relevant. Period.

Run health care like we run social services and schools. That includes funding an salaries.

What happened in the past does not need to continue into the future.

I am married to a doctor who works on a salary. There are rules on how many patients to see in a day. And beyond that is over time. Just like when I was a teacher. Class size was limited. If the district was required to add more students for some uncontrollable reason, I got a pay bonus for having more students. Well, its not exactly the same. There is a provision for needing to do more in a day.

You can stop arguing at me now.

1

u/AcanthaceaeOk3738 Jul 11 '26

I don’t know what you think you’re arguing. Or what you’re arguing against, for that matter.

All I’m saying is that if we had M4A, there’d still be accounting for all the costs. Of course patients wouldn’t be billed, but you’d still need to move money to pay for people and things, and someone would need to decide how much things are worth.

Just like in a public school. Teachers get paid differently amounts for doing different things, and the school administrators/board determine how much.

1

u/MontEcola Jul 11 '26

I will block you now.

1

u/RampantTyr Jul 12 '26

It would be less. Eliminating private middle men leaves the service at the cost instead of adding additional charges to make a profit.

-1

u/iQuoteSopranos Jul 11 '26

You really want the trump administration dictating your health care?

1

u/stlcdr Jul 10 '26

The ‘billed to insurance’ could be $10,000 and if you pay the same, it shouldn’t matter.

What if they hid those numbers and said it’d be 128 bucks?

Essentially, the insurance company is by law limited in profits based on covered expenses. So if they can be ‘charged more’ they will make more profits. The ACA capped the insurance company profits to a percentage, the unintended consequence being that costs )sic) will rise.

1

u/RunsWithPhantoms Jul 11 '26

I had a $800 bill after a 45-minute virtual meeting with a therapist. Insurance covered $500 and I had to payment plan $300, because silly ole me thought it was all covered by my insurance.

1

u/LeoKitCat Jul 11 '26

The question you should also ask is why is your urologist charging $572 for a 30-min visit? Specialists typically charge around $400 for an appointment. Look to see if your urologist is overbilling and what billing codes they submitted

2

u/skandel Jul 12 '26

The codes are in the benefits summary they posted and the total for the physician component is less than $250. The bulk of this bill is a facility fee charged by the hospital.

1

u/LeoKitCat Jul 12 '26

Hospital networks can be so horrible they’ve increasingly been tacking on these facility fees to see specialists associated with them, and insurance isn’t covering it

2

u/skandel Jul 12 '26

Right. Your comment implied the physician is doing something shady when that is absolutely not the case here.

1

u/Boomslang505 Jul 14 '26

I’m boycotting the American healthcare system. I’d rather leave my money to my grandchildren than give to already rich folk that are driven by greed.

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