The BG Health Care Thread: Decreasing the Surplus Population

[kuronosan]

I'll fix your appendix for $15,000.


... Or just give me your car. That works too.

[Roranora]

Lucky me I got that appendectomy outta the way at age 15.

Though I was disappointed I was not given my appendix in a jar. I bet we could work that out in this future bartering.

[kuronosan]

Our medical jars are $1000. You could just let me sleep in your house for a month.

[Day]

Our medical jars are $1000.

[Day]

is it to store the 2000 dollar asprin?

[kuronosan]

Because your insurance company is going to only pay $50 of it. If a hospital charged $500, they'd get $25. Rinse and repeat.

[archibaldcrane]

My father in law trimmed a veterinarians trees once to save the family dog lol

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[Day]

Because your insurance company is going to only pay $50 of it. If a hospital charged $500, they'd get $25. Rinse and repeat.

someone is making bank

[kuronosan]

It ain't hospitals, trust me.

[Day]

sounds like it might be the jar manufacturer

[kuronosan]

Those jars cost like a dollar haha.

What you pay for when you pay for "$900 saline" is handling, sterilizing, sealing, storing, and administering.

When you get an infusion I'm guessing you want to be sure you're not getting contaminant injected through your veins.

I mean, saline shouldn't cost a grand but let's not fool ourselves into thinking your average person can make guaranteed safe saline in their backyard.

[zoobernut]

Those jars cost like a dollar haha.

What you pay for when you pay for "$900 saline" is handling, sterilizing, sealing, storing, and administering.

When you get an infusion I'm guessing you want to be sure you're not getting contaminant injected through your veins.

I mean, saline shouldn't cost a grand but let's not fool ourselves into thinking your average person can make guaranteed safe saline in their backyard.

If that is the case why do vets only charge a fraction of that for the exact same saline? My wife is a vet tech and they have to adhere to the same standards of handling, storing, sterilizing etc. that a regular hospital does and they purchase the exact same saline bags from the same suppliers.

[kuronosan]

Do vets run a 1000 bed operation with animals coming in giving birth, dying, coming close to dying, getting infusions, 24 hours a day 365 days a year?

[archibaldcrane]

Saline is garbage and kills people anyway.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/ar...on-saline.html

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[zoobernut]

Do vets run a 1000 bed operation with animals coming in giving birth, dying, coming close to dying, getting infusions, 24 hours a day 365 days a year?

Yes to everything you said except for the extreme volume. But typically in the world higher volume should drive prices down not up.

[Day]

Do vets run a 1000 bed operation with animals coming in giving birth, dying, coming close to dying, getting infusions, 24 hours a day 365 days a year?

i kind of but don't really get why this would affect the price of saline, i mean you do understand why it causes massive frustration and confusion from the patient right? I feel like all this stuff would be better factored into the labor/services whatever cost rather than tacked on the price of the jar or medicine what have you. at least people would have a better understanding of where the money is going

[kuronosan]

I agree with you 100%.

But from what I have seen so far, the choice is "cheap supplies and low cost" or "potentially run out of the ability to save lives because you have no other means of profit". I absolutely disagree that bags of saline and antibiotics should cost so much. The alternative is closing up shop because right now, insurance companies essentially control the prices. As long as they keep increasing premiums, decreasing payouts, and refusing reimbursements, hospitals will continue to have no choice but to increase prices (that they know patients will have to submit for write-off or send it off to collections and ruin their credit) in order to make some margin back on the sheer volume they use every day.

On the other hand, I have witnessed careless waste of product "just because we have it lying around", which a lot of large-budget agencies are guilty of (looking at you, military). This is also bad.

I think if we reigned in insurance companies while making clinics more accountable for supply use we'd probably see a stable drop.

The reality is for every pet (and don't even joke, pet care is ridiculously expensive too) there are 10 people with 100x more needs in a hospital on a daily basis. It sucks.

[Zealot]

I would do that, as President.

I'm thinking of running for President.

[zoobernut]

I agree with you 100%.

But from what I have seen so far, the choice is "cheap supplies and low cost" or "potentially run out of the ability to save lives because you have no other means of profit". I absolutely disagree that bags of saline and antibiotics should cost so much. The alternative is closing up shop because right now, insurance companies essentially control the prices. As long as they keep increasing premiums, decreasing payouts, and refusing reimbursements, hospitals will continue to have no choice but to increase prices (that they know patients will have to submit for write-off or send it off to collections and ruin their credit) in order to make some margin back on the sheer volume they use every day.

On the other hand, I have witnessed careless waste of product "just because we have it lying around", which a lot of large-budget agencies are guilty of (looking at you, military). This is also bad.

I think if we reigned in insurance companies while making clinics more accountable for supply use we'd probably see a stable drop.

The reality is for every pet (and don't even joke, pet care is ridiculously expensive too) there are 10 people with 100x more needs in a hospital on a daily basis. It sucks.

The reason why I was running a comparison between saline in a hospital and saline for your pet is because I happen to know they come from the same supplier and that they have to follow all the same stringent rules on handling storing use etc.

Also I think pet care seems so expensive because it is more transparent in its cost than human health care. There is no insurance there is no hidden shit anywhere. You go in and the business charges you what they need in order to stay in business. Believe me vet dr's unless they are a specialist are not making massive amounts and neither are the vet techs (same level of education as a nurse).

I imagine that the whole system would work better if healthcare behaved more like a vet hospital. A lot of the extra cost in health care is a product of this complexity built into the system which requires so much extra labor to decode it all.

[kuronosan]

You're probably right.