Actual reimbursement for an MRI is typically around 1000 bucks, that includes both technical and professional fees.
right to live does not equal right to free/low cost health insurance.
What we need is pretty simple, how the dems and repubs screwed it up beyond belief is hard to understand.
* Eliminate the insurance companies, pay the government directly who pays the hospital directly, let the middle man die off
* Regulate prices so that hospitals aren't charging $500 to bring you a boiled hot dog for dinner and $5000 for an xray. One standard price for one standard procedure, adjusted by inflation
* Put a cap on malpactice suits to lower insurance costs for doctors and hospitals
* Increase the hard cap on the number of doctors that are allowed to exit medical school each year so that we have more doctors internally
* Eliminate advertising for big pharma (spending hundreds of millions on advertising for prescription drugs is ludicrous)
* Data mine surgical procedures to find which ones are the best, not which ones cost the most to give the doctor the most money
It was modeled on Romneys healthcare in Massachusetts...
My insurance pays out about 6k for my yearly MRI... Although technically it is billed as 2 (brain+c-spine--rip off), so that is about 3k each. The billed amount is about 3500 higher.
When I was in a different hospital a few years ago I had a bill of 80k.. 80% of that was MRI and CAT scans. I was out of network, so they ended up paying the full non-discounted bill.
I don't believe AT has the smarts to discuss this issue beyond mimicking Faux news sound bites.
What's most important is who to blame. Whether it's blame that's warranted or not, the progressive left is loathe to ever admit failure. Curiously, my grandkids are never at fault for anything they do wrong either.
If Obamacare is a failure so what? It's just another piece of the fail puzzle. We'll have had eight years of him before it's over and he'll not be held responsible by his faithful followers for anything. The best thing to do is to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.
So far, all we have are predictions of failure from the usual Cassandras...
Your ability to project right wing attributes onto your opponents is stunning... obviously, the years of Repub governance under GWB & a Repub Congress are in no way to blame for the current economic situation... There was no housing bubble top down looting spree, and it wasn't touted from the Bully Pulpit, either...
Couldn't Be!
Unfortunately, no one has yet to come up with the idea of health care reform.
Name three things which are going to enable the provider to improve the patient/provider relationship, which is the basis for healthcare, not thousands of pages of regulations.
It's easy to see, that providing healthcare, is not a problem. We are America, and our Doctors, research and development, marketing, and sales, are without peer.
The problem with Healthcare, is the scum -- Government, Insurance and Lawyers, that only exist to sensationalize damage, capitalize on the very basis of humanity, and screw everyone in sight.
-John