Comment on If you receive a high medical bill, don't pay it immediately. Ask for an itemized bill first.
BanMe@lemmy.world 1 week agoI had a spontaenous pneumothorax in my late 20s, only reason I had insurance was because it was the year of the Obamacare mandate. I was unemployed so the state I was in gave me free insurance. I had about $330k worth of surgeries and paid … $19 for an optional medication.
Would have definitely bankrupted me.
And my mother, who is buried under her own medical bills, told me “you should have been bankrupted.”
She apologized later but that’s the mentality. We don’t speak anymore.
Abundance114@lemmy.world 1 week ago
High prices are due to government regulation.
The consumer is saved by the government from problems caused by government regulation.
The consumer thanks for government for saving them from the problem the government created.
Flauschige_Lemmata@lemmy.world 5 days ago
High prices are due to a lack of government regulations.
Pharma companies can set the prices according to what people are willing to pay. And people are willing to pay everything if it will save their lifes.
Abundance114@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Pharma companies can set the prices to whatever they want because they have government protected monopolies over their products.
Flauschige_Lemmata@lemmy.world 5 days ago
I thought generics were handled relatively similarly in the EU and the US, but apparently the US does grant a bunch of exclusivities, on top of patents.
However the biggest difference between those health systems still seems to be how providers bargain for lower prices.
In the US, insurances bargain for rebates. That means that if you buy a drug with insurance the insurance only pays a small percentage of the drug price. They are still allowed to demand copay on the list price. So often the insurance makes a profit in that transaction. But if you try to go around insurance you have to pay the full list price and will pay even more.
Over here, the universal healthcare providers bargain with the pharma companies to lower the list price. And with a much greater bargaining power to boot.