Paying cash to lower healthcare costs

[Teal Lantern]

Between appearing in the WSJ and being mentioned on Rush, this option is about to get a major uptick in interest.

tl;dr version:
Patient needs procedure.
With insurance, hospital wants him to pay $20K up front.
Patient balks, reschedules as self-pay. Final out-of-pocket cost is $3K.

The Man Who Was Treated for $17,000 Less
Bypassing his third-party payer, my patient avoided a high hospital 'list price.'
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 86176.html

WSJ Makes Rush's Longstanding Point on Paying for Health Care,
Introducing Market Forces, and Driving Down Cost

As an aside, why are organizations who supported ObamaCare getting waivers and exemptions for themselves?
Nevada AFL-CIO condemns provision of Obamacare
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2013/au ... obamacare/

[MrPeabody]

I pay cash in Mexico. I self insure. My medical bills for the year are about the same as one month of insurance in the US would be.

[kai1275]

Between appearing in the WSJ and being mentioned on Rush, this option is about to get a major uptick in interest.

tl;dr version:
Patient needs procedure.
With insurance, hospital wants him to pay $20K up front.
Patient balks, reschedules as self-pay. Final out-of-pocket cost is $3K.

The Man Who Was Treated for $17,000 Less
Bypassing his third-party payer, my patient avoided a high hospital 'list price.'
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 86176.html

WSJ Makes Rush's Longstanding Point on Paying for Health Care,
Introducing Market Forces, and Driving Down Cost

As an aside, why are organizations who supported ObamaCare getting waivers and exemptions for themselves?
Nevada AFL-CIO condemns provision of Obamacare
http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2013/au ... obamacare/

The only reason why they cut down the cost after he refused to use his insurance, is because of all of those extra things they like to puff up the billing with when they send the bill to your insurance company hoping they will just pay for it. Of course now most Healthcare insurers are going to make you pay for most of that too these days. They are fed up with greedy hospitals overcharging like 5 dollars for pill cups and other miscellaneous plastic pieces.

If you offer to pay cash, they know that you wont accept such a huge invoice full of stuffed charges, so they just charge you for the bare minimum materials and the doctors hourly rate compared to his peers too.

It's greed on all sides. Not just one.

[momopi]

When I was unemployed and had the minimum Kaiser insurance (with high deductible), I bartered with my acupuncture doctor, dentist, and accountant to work on their office computers in exchange for treatment.

Sometimes you find things that you might have been better off not knowing, like what kind of pr0n your doctor likes to download.