Hospitals are ignoring the law on price transparency.
Health Affairs article reviews a decade of Obamacare. No mention of the narrow networks, outrageous deductibles and out-of-pocket exposure for people who are unfortunate enough to get sick.
More on Medicare site neutrality: What’s involved. What it would save.
The Affordable Care Act has more than 1,000 mentions of the phrase “the secretary shall.”
The article on cost sharing for cancer diagnostic tests is very interesting — like a lot of your posts.
The early propaganda about high deductibles was that if patients faced some real cost for their medical care, they would cut back on frivolous items that were not worth their cost.
There was little mention about cutting back non-frivolous items. That is an area that deserves a lot more attention.
This article shows how difficult it can be to make policy in this area. The article discussed 1.1 million patients who would skip some diagnostic tests, and about 7,000 of them could get cancer that might have been mitigated.
7,000 is sort of small beer, unless your family is one of the 7,000. I am one of the 7,000…not for breast cancer but for chronic lymphocitic leukemia. I was diagnosed 10 years ago, and have received quarterly checkups and drugs for minimal out of pocket costs.
When it comes to cancer, the average patient knows next to nothing about the choices for their care. Paternalism seems inevitable.