Quote:
Originally Posted by Leon
Nice story Tsaiko. One of my best friends is self employed so has a very high (maybe 5k-10k) deductible on his health insurance. He needed a knee surgery and went to see the doctor. Doctor told him it would be about 10k. (This is in the last year btw.) My friend asked him, ok how much if I just pay with cash. The doctor said $2500. This is not an uncommon scene. Ask around and you will see this kind of situation. I propose we scrap medical insurance and our costs might go down 50 percent or more. Yes, I know the insurance lobbyists would never let that happen but it's a nice thought.
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That's basically the same story as mine. I shopped around a lot for an MRI deal and ended up paying $770 for the MRI, including die pump and radiology read. At the same imaging center, I compared notes with another patient who had the exact same procedure with insurance. His bill indicated a total cost of $1500 with a 30% co-pay. I admit that the shopping process can be time consuming, but at my age I'd be spending about 8k a year with a 5k deductible, so that's 13k before insurance will pay anything. Nuts!!
I must get some sort of catastrophic policy, so I won't be wiped out if I have a major crisis, but for everything else, so far at least, I'm way, way ahead financially.
Personally I think it's wrong to make a profit from people being sick, but that's capitalism.