Right, their preference is to get cash in hand ASAP. I’m guessing that 30% discount is probably just about the same (or an even smaller discount) than insurance companies and medicare have already negotiated.
No its not. I talked to them about it. Go through insurance, charge is full price, period. In addition, 30% is not equivalent to the time-value-of-money for the reimbursement period in question. Besides, why present one amount as the cost when using insurance cost while the real cost for using insurance is done under the table? Does not make sense.
This same thing has happened with auto insurance… driving up repair costs. People only see the large bills, not the steady drip-drip-drip coming from their pockets. This is also why house prices are framed in terms of monthly payment.. not total price when talking about affordability.
I assume you have seen the TV commercials out for auto repair insurance.. showing that if you have a big repair, ie ECU (Engine Control Unit), you have to pay a lot of money and with their insurance, you have to pay nothing.. what they fail to mention is that with insurance, you have been paying every month for that ECU, whether or not you really end up needing to use the coverage. Insurance companies end up making money off of holding your money for a period of time and by making sure that the total amount they pay off in claims is less than the total amount the receive in premiums for a given time period. After all, insurance is a business, run for profit.
But that’s really not what the reform question is about. The more important question is whether they would rather deal with the federal government or private insurance. Since they already deal with medicare, almost flawlessly, the only significant question is reimbursment rate.
Actually it is what the reform question is about, and medicare reimbursement is not in any way flawless. In fact, the entire Medicare insurance system is nearly bankrupt and the paperwork can be a nightmare(from the doctors point of view). The discussion is actually 3 way; self-pay, private insurance or public(gov) insurance. Insurance companies want to frame it in terms of private vs. gov insurance with the gov insurance ‘taking away your rights’. They don’t want people to look at self-pay because people will realize that the insurance companies are basically ripping people off.
