Comment by chaxor
2 years ago
The reasonable solution that people in the US arrive at is to avoid going to physicians at all costs. I recently found out that a simple blood test at the physicians office costs ~$600 (with insurance), along with all of the annoyance of dealing with setting up the appointments waiting for several months, waiting on insurance, the trouble and time off work to get there - all for a material that takes a few minutes to extract and few moments to run.
Due to the cost I was curious, and found out that I could literally purchase all of the FDA-approved* lab equipment for my house and run tests on myself for less cost than it was to go to a physicians office. The physician (i.e. expertise) is irrelevant here (almost always are) as the most input I've ever seen provided by one amounts to 'take an Aleve if you're hurting'.
Home labs are likely where the future is headed, and it's the fault of the medical industry being so utterly useless. I've been through most medschool (neurology-focused) courses, and most physicians or any medical professional uses essentially zero of that knowledge.
My expectation is that costs for these simple tests will become competitive as physicians become more and more scarce -- if the person doing your blood test is no longer an expert, and is just feeding it into an off-the-shelf machine, then there's a lot more flexibility in cost-cutting.
(In fact, my local hospital has pretty great lab prices for this exact reason, so I'd assume this kind of price competition for simple tasks might already be a thing in some urban areas.)
I know it's even stupid for me to say this, but capitalism should have no place in hospital health care.
It's lives on the line. In a somewhat realistic ideal world, any monies that exchange hands at that level should be to cover costs plus a moderated profit.
The lack of moderation and accountable oversight on the profit centers of healthcare is a real issue that we could solve, but too many people would rather have a 0.00000001% greater chance of becoming a millionaire in their lifetimes rather than put checks on unchecked capitalism.