The majority of healthcare is for routine and known in advance procedures, not for emergency or exploratory procedures.
Sure, the GP might want to order tests, but the cost of the test will be known in advance, the cost of the consultation was already known by the patient.
The patient can tdecide which radiologist they want, using price as a criteria if they want to.
The existing method is basically "you can only know what the cost is after you owe it to us", which is, frankly, insane. It allows the sellers to set a price that the ma let cannot bear, which results in secondary markets that provide insurance and skim even more off the top.
> The majority of healthcare is for routine and known in advance procedures
Yes what kind of procedure is needed often is known in advance. The details often only emerge after it's been started though. Just because it's routine does not at all mean it's all predictably-in-advance the same throughout, except for really basic stuff, which in turn is unlikely to be the big cost driver.
> Yes what kind of procedure is needed often is known in advance. The details often only emerge after it's been started though. Just because it's routine does not at all mean it's all predictably-in-advance the same throughout, except for really basic stuff, which in turn is unlikely to be the big cost driver.
I dunno that I'd call a broken leg "really basic stuff".
This is what I responded to and what I quoted in my original post:
> "Here is the cash price. We won't know your HDHP insurance price until after we bill them, which could be good for you or could be bad."
So, yeah, the supplier currently knows in advance what it costs to fix a broken leg. There is no reason for the price of more mundane medical care to be opaque at all.
Sure, the GP might want to order tests, but the cost of the test will be known in advance, the cost of the consultation was already known by the patient.
The patient can tdecide which radiologist they want, using price as a criteria if they want to.
The existing method is basically "you can only know what the cost is after you owe it to us", which is, frankly, insane. It allows the sellers to set a price that the ma let cannot bear, which results in secondary markets that provide insurance and skim even more off the top.