I’ve just recently realized that Walgreens can be a rip off on prescriptions.
ex. Generic lipitor is $29 retail at Costco and $740 at Walgreens. Other local options are in the $100-$400 range.
OTOH I just filled a prescription there that was under $2 for a months supply after insurance adjustment…
Of course the ‘retail’ price is meaningless…
Its a giant mess.
THey should just have a big wheel you spin when you go to the pharmacy that has various prices on it…
Yes, exactly. All the good ones already are here. 
Only a fool believes medical care in Canada is equivalent to that here in the USA. And asserting that, I’m not even considering timeliness of care.
Medicare for all is great for about three years. Then … as everywhere else … it becomes underfunded n its a mess.
Not to mention politics on approving $50,000 a month drugs. Or $70,000 a month drug that adds about 7 months time advantage before the disease take you anyways.
End of life care is astronomical. And why not get the expensive drugs. You arent really paying for it. When its insurance they get to say no. But when its govt just get the media on yourside n get the politicians on yourside. Boom your $490,000 dollar 7 month drug regimen is now covered.
That money HAS to come from somewhere. Us.
Based on what happens in other countries with national health, the answer will also be “no.”
The Bogleheads just started a thread on concierge medicine.
Bogleheads thread
A lot of posters are pretty happy with the quality of care. I was surprised that the prices mentioned seemed reasonable.
I believe it’s quite reasonable because most people don’t go to the Dr. that often.
For me personally, the example of 12x$57/mo is much more than what I’d pay for a free annual plus another visit at ~$70 under insurance.
Of course, when you’re ill and getting the runaround from a normal overloaded regular Dr, I suspect it’s money well spent.
I thought that was a good read. In particular, several doctors commented on the different kinds of care they give their patients under a direct service model vs an insurance model, the costs associated with each, etc.
it’s clear that at least from the incentives and the payment structures involved, you would expect to get better care from a direct service arrangement rather than going thru insurance as a middle man. The extra insurance overhead adds extra costs, imposed both on you in terms of doctor choice and on the doctor for claims hassles and non- payment, mean that the doctor has less time he can afford to spend on an insurance patient, follow ups are more limited and inefficient, etc.
Good points. No question the current system with in-network and out-of-network choices, plus overheads where you need tons of staff to process insurance claims, etc… that is far from efficient, leads to time spent on red tape rather than care. I suspect for simple doctor visits, that should work very well.
But in case you need to go to a hospital for something more serious, I don’t know how it’d work and it seems to me that some form of catastrophic insurance would still be cheaper than paying it all on your own.
Worth noting in these virus-laden times - a comparison of US health resources to those with national/socialized medicine approaches. I guess we are paying more for something after all.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-intensive-care-dividend-11584399701
2012 review in the journal Current Opinion in Critical Care found that the U.S. has 20 to 31.7 ICU beds per 100,000 people compared to 13.5 in Canada, 7.9 in Japan and between 3.5 and 7.4 in the U.K. Differences in how countries define “ICU” account for some of the disparity, the article notes, and the U.S. needs more ICU beds because it has a higher incidence of chronic conditions like heart disease. But importantly, the article finds that health spending is correlated “with increasing delivery of critical care.”
Countries with socialized systems ration intensive care. “Studies from Japan and the U.K determined that admissions to ICUs are severely limited for the very elderly and patients perceived to have little chance of survival,” the article says. In the U.K., many patients were “denied intensive care due to a lack of beds” and “discharged from the ICU prematurely.” The U.K.’s National Health Service already struggles each winter to provide adequate care during routine flu seasons, as our Joseph Sternberg documented on Friday.
Please note the date of 2012. That is before either:
a) Obama reduced the number so that healthcare costs wouldn’t go up
b) Trump reduced the number because he doesn’t care about anyone but rich people.
“But the rest of the world pays half as much as the US…”. Pay more, have more services available. Sometimes it matters.
Presidents can reduce or increase the number of ICU beds in hospitals?
My weak attempt at fair and balanced humor. 
I can’t wait to hear any media outlet chasing down NBA players to shame them for taking tests that the less rich can’t get.
The only think I didn’t like about the Bloomberg article was their repetition of “Money gets you better treatment. That’s how money works in this county”
I thought these reporters were educated and worldly. Don’t they realize thats how it works in EVERY country?
Canada telling nursing home patients that the hospital won’t take them for ventilators if they get a bad case from the virus. Sure their odds are worse, but they’re not even going to try since they don’t have as many hospital resources.
Healthcare - you pay with your money or you pay with your life. In Canada, that choice is made for you.
That is Orwellian crazy, literally a goverment bureaucrat death squad deciding who gets to live and die.
Americans are still going to vote to socialize healthcare since they’ve been sold a narrative that it is the greatest thing ever.
Apparently so. I heard that they have total authority.
Looks like Trump’s medical pricing transparency is going into effect for the New Year so hospitals will have to disclose their pricing for the first time in decades.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/hospitals-say-they-will-publish-previously-secret-prices-11609442913
Backup link
The roughly $1.2 trillion hospital sector will begin posting prices publicly in the New Year after losing a legal challenge to overturn new transparency rules that are a centerpiece of the Trump administration’s health-care policy.
Hospital pricing is negotiated confidentially between hospitals and the employer groups and insurance companies that pay for care, which has obscured market rates that have helped drive up the cost of health insurance premiums paid by employers and workers. Rising hospital prices accounted for about one-fifth of the nation’s health spending growth in the last half-century, federal data show.
The nation’s largest hospital chains, including publicly traded giantsHCA Healthcare Inc., Universal Health Services Inc. and Community Health Systems Inc., and national nonprofit chains CommonSpirit Health and Ascension, said they planned to comply with new requirements to post pricing. Tenet Healthcare Corp. declined to comment.
One of the main failings of Obamacare and the various health insurance reform efforts was an emphasis on insurance coverage rather than cost control, and hence we’ve seen spiraling healthcare costs and correspondingly health insurance costs. With this transparency, assuming Biden doesn’t cave to the healthcare lobby and revoke it, the market incentives will suddenly be shifted towards encouraging quoting lower prices rather than perversely quoting higher ones.
Are they going to publish “all in” rates? Or just line item prices? Because even the simplest hospital stays can result in dozens of items being billed, which will still make comparisons nearly impossible.