The latest issue of Health Care News features a commentary, “Price Transparency Is a Fraud in a Fake Market.” This argument is somewhat surprising because conservative policy wonks love to expound on the benefits of price transparency. The logic goes that if only doctors, hospitals and drug makers were forced to reveal prices consumers would shop and force down prices, like occurs in competitive markets.
Category: Health Reform
Thursday Links
- Yglesias: Is it time to get rid of teacher licensing requirements?
- Ultraviolet light may be the cheapest and most effective preventive medicine there is.
- With a New York City “get-out-of-jail” free card, you can speed and run red lights with impunity.
- A Chief Patient Officer represents patients in bureaucratic institutions. A Chief Contrarian asks hard questions that otherwise wouldn’t be asked in organizations that are on auto-pilot. Neither would be needed if we had a free market for health care.
Wednesday Links
- A bipartisan congressional tax deal sounds very good to us.
- “Having a best friend with a reported serious injury in the previous year increases the probability of own opioid misuse by around 7 percentage points in a population where 17 percent ever misuses opioids.”
- Between 2000 and 2020, Black individuals consistently experienced higher cancer mortality than White individuals for all cancers except female lung and bronchus.
- “Over time, most Latin American countries can expect shrinking populations,” causing lots of economic problems. Recommended
- Why Florida may not save $180 million by importing drugs from Canada. (Bloomberg)
The Cost of Obamacare
According to the KFF subsidy calculator, a 60-year-old with a $100,000 income, has to pay a premium (net of subsidy) of $708 a month or $8496 a year. The annual out-of-pocket exposure is $9,450.
If the individual has costly health problems, he will have to pay $17,946 before the health plan begins paying all other expenses. If his illness is chronic, he must bear this expense every year.
If the individual goes out-of-network, because the plan doesn’t cover the specialty care he needs, the plan pays nothing.