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PaperclipPerfector  16d ago (text post)   30776 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 2, 2024

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I mean, it's not the norm in healthcare. It's uncommon to have the kind of issues @ControlsFreak describes - I've never had it happen, and if I think to my wider social circle I can think of perhaps once that someone I know has run into that. I think it's perfectly fair to compare an edge case in healthcare to an edge case in auto repair.

You've always had them provide a price up front? You've never been hit by a surprise? This seems unlikely, especially because this is one of the most common complaints. We've had multiple laws passed in recent years specifically attempting to go after this problem in response to public dissatisfaction, but they've been kind of half-measures (the surprise billing law about out-of-network providers at in-network facilities/emergency care and the price transparency law that only resulted in some incomprehensible websites).

This comes up a lot on reddit, because a lot of people are frustrated with how often it keeps constantly going on. A lot of those times, you have doctors showing up claiming that folks just don't understand; that they don't even know the price of things; some say it's basically impossible to know.

I haven't gotten prices up front (but I don't ask either). I have never been surprised by "oh actually this isn't covered, sorry". My insurance gets billed, either they pay the charge or (if I haven't met my yearly deductible yet), I do. Everything works smoothly.

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