Monday, May 05, 2008
 
Missouri State Legislature Would Eliminate Middle Man, Pass Savings On To Voters
The commanders of the economy are at it again:
    A bill before the Missouri House would prohibit doctors from marking up the cost of certain anatomical laboratory work — such as skin biopsies and Pap tests — that are performed by outside laboratories.

    The bill, which has been approved by the Senate and is awaiting floor debate in the House, would prohibit what's known as "pass-through" billing.

    That's when a doctor sends a patient's test sample to an outside laboratory for analysis. The lab charges the doctor a discounted price for the work, but the doctor bills the patient's insurance or the patient a higher amount.
No word on whether the Missouri state legislature will go after mechanics, computer repair shops, construction people, and every other business that uses subcontracting. It's doubtful, though, because these people are not the current boogeyman that the medical industry is.

However, once that particular Gulliver is bound to earth, watch out.

UPDATE: Legislator corrected to legislature in title and body. Now that someone's reading it, I suppose I should make it correcter.


- posted by Brian J. @ 6:36 AM
Comments:
Michael F. Cannon wrote an article in the Weekly Standard's website last year called I'm Not Going to Pay a Lot for this MRI, discussing why health care costs so much. His argument? The patient doesn't directly bear much of the cost of his or her care, and therefore has no interest in demanding quality care at competitive prices.

It's a persuasive argument, and I fear that we'll instead move into the opposite direction, with planned, centralized care that will cost even more, with poorer care.
# posted by Blogger gimlet : Monday, May 05, 2008 10:30:00 PM
 


Bear? The customer doesn't even know!

Plus the people selling the gizmos decide how much gizmo you need.

As my mother died, I watched the staff rip open, every hour or two, sealed boxes of some kind of kit with a few specialised plastic gizmos in it, extract a single tem, and dicard the rest of the kit.

Those kits cost, I eventually was able to find out, $55 each.

The item used?

A Q TIP.
# posted by Blogger staghounds : Wednesday, May 07, 2008 5:58:00 PM
 


It won't cost any more-

it will be FREE!
# posted by Blogger staghounds : Wednesday, May 07, 2008 6:00:00 PM
 


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