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Related to this, I was listening to an NPR program recently that tackled the question: If your pet's doctor can give you a list of pricing options before you de

Related to this, I was listening to an NPR program recently that tackled the question: If your pet's doctor can give you a list of pricing options before you decide on treatment, why can't your own doctor do that for you? The answer was that our doctors are disconnected from the costs of treatment because they can't be expected to know every possible charge for every different insurance plan (what the patient would have to pay for procedures, medicine, support staff [anesthesiologists who are out of network, for example], devices [pacemakers, wrist splints, artificial hips, etc.], lab fees, etc.). So why not something that can bring that information to them? This would be a benefit not just to consumers but to insurance companies as well, and that's where the money would be. Feel free to cut me in on the action.

thetylerhayes 11y ago
Directionally correct but slightly off. Vets don't memorize all that either; they also use EMRs. The difference is in insurance: 1. You pay directly for your pet's care. Your vet gets the money. No in-between to obscurify the money. 2. You pay insurance for your own care, and your doctor bills your insurance. Your doctor's EMR might know the insurance cost, but that cost can still change. And there are lots of middlemen in billing processing in healthcare, so it's not an accurate representation of reimbursement anyway. There are quite a few startups trying to remedy this in various ways. Most of them focus on data transparency; they try to aggregate and publicly list all the direct pay costs for different doctors. The problem with that remains the same: most people don't have the precedent in their head of paying for healthcare, so they don't want to pay direct. Not impossible to fix. Someone certainly will. Probably orthogonally, like how Slack is unbundling email. But the tech barrier is small compared to the social barrier. Would be pretty sweet if someone was able to map out all insurance costs though, even to 90% consistency. Hooo boy that would be sweet.

thetylerhayes 11y ago

Directionally correct but slightly off. Vets don't memorize all that either; they also use EMRs. The difference is in insurance: 1. You pay directly for your pet's care. Your vet gets the money. No in-between to obscurify the money. 2. You pay insurance for your own care, and your doctor bills your insurance. Your doctor's EMR might know the insurance cost, but that cost can still change. And there are lots of middlemen in billing processing in healthcare, so it's not an accurate representation of reimbursement anyway. There are quite a few startups trying to remedy this in various ways. Most of them focus on data transparency; they try to aggregate and publicly list all the direct pay costs for different doctors. The problem with that remains the same: most people don't have the precedent in their head of paying for healthcare, so they don't want to pay direct. Not impossible to fix. Someone certainly will. Probably orthogonally, like how Slack is unbundling email. But the tech barrier is small compared to the social barrier. Would be pretty sweet if someone was able to map out all insurance costs though, even to 90% consistency. Hooo boy that would be sweet.