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Providers and insurers do have to get together to negotiate rates - but that depends on whether the doctor or provider accepts direct insurance payments in the first place. Not all providers do allow patients to use insurance to pay for the bill directly, preferring instead that the patient pay full price up front then bill his or her insurance carrier. If the doctor does accept direct insurance payments, patients pay less out-of-pocket, but the actual cost of the medical care provided is the same.
posted by
kidnykid
on November 16, 2006 at 8:45 AM
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What you're dealing with - aside from your health condition - is
the reality that the health providers and the health insurers are in cahoots.
posted by
Pat_B
on November 16, 2006 at 7:13 AM
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My point, implicitly, is that there is room for improvement in the delivery of both conventional and alternative medicine. No matter what type of health care one chooses, the cost is outrageous. True Believers in alternative health gripe about the cost of the conventional stuff, but alternative medicine is just as bad in terms of price (witness the price of some of the natural vitamins, for example). Alternative medicine just looks worse because little (if any) of the cost is covered by insurance. Also, too much conventional medicine is what I call protocol-based - everyone with the same diagnosis gets the same dose of the same drug, or everyone having the same surgery gets his/her stitches/staples out at the same point after the operation, even if he/she is not completely healed from the surgery.
posted by
kidnykid
on November 15, 2006 at 1:20 PM
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kidnykid,
You can't win for losing, can you? The insurance companies have got things nicely screwed up for us. They won't pay for the alternative medicine which might be able to help us and do it more cheaply, and they deem themselves more knowledgable than our own doctors, deciding what is necessary in a individual's treatment and what is not. They've done far more harm than good, in my opinion.
It would be wonderful if we were able to pursue whatever means of treatment that works for us, as individuals, and if we were all open-minded enough to actually try different things when one doesn't seem to be working.
Good post.
posted by
RAME
on November 15, 2006 at 12:34 PM
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