The U.S. could slash health-care costs with two fundamental changes
First off, if something this large can drop by 75% in price then you&#x27;re being bamboozled, extorted, or potentially both.<p><i>&quot;Under our current system, it’s nearly impossible for people with health insurance to find out in advance what anything covered by their insurance will end up costing.&quot;</i><p>It&#x27;s worse than that.  Not only can you find or figure out how much everything will cost, most places (particularly hospitals and outpatient centers) will not even tell you how much they charge for their services.  Some news outlet did a study and called the top 25 hospitals in the country and asked them how much a hip replacement would cost.  Only around 3-5 actually gave a number and it varied wildly.  The rest refused to pin down any number at all.  That&#x27;s one of the most common surgeries there are and they don&#x27;t know what they will charge for it?<p>On the moral&#x2F;philosophical side - how can a person be held financially liable for something they cannot possibly know the cost of in advance, even if they try to find out?  Such practices are illegal everywhere else in this nation.  And there is no legal exception for healthcare providers.  How do I know that?  Because a few years ago Rand Paul tried to pass a law that would exempt healthcare providers.  It failed - which means it is still <i>currently illegal</i> to be doing this.  Yet not one of these providers or operations has been charged accordingly.  If you went to a mechanic and they took a look at your car and you asked how much it was going to cost to fix it and they responded with &quot;which insurance do you have?&quot; or &quot;I don&#x27;t know until I&#x27;m done&quot; they would get shut down and charged, and rightfully so.  Because the logical conclusion is to say it costs some extravagant amount of money and then &quot;settle&quot; for something less.  Which gee, doesn&#x27;t that happen a lot in the medical industry when people can&#x27;t pay their bills?  People face bankruptcy and can&#x27;t afford a $10,000 bill but somehow the hospital is just fine accepting $3,000 instead?