$325 through the doctor, $21 on Amazon

[Nine]

Ok, so as long as we're talking about the f'ed up medical system in this country, let's discuss the exorbitant prices for medical equipment. I've been having plantar fasciitis for a while. I went to a podiatrist to address that (along with a recent ankle sprain that I thought had not healed properly). I had seen night splints on Amazon, and the one I liked was $21 with free Prime shipping but I figured I would ask the podiatrist first. They wanted to charge $325 for a night splint! Insurance would have covered most of that and my share would have been $65, still far more than the Amazon one. (The most expensive one I could find on Amazon was $83 and Amazon has its own share of exorbitantly priced products.) I've seen many other examples of overpriced medical equipment when dealing with my parents' care. (And when I say "medical equipment," I'm talking about things as basic as a wheelchair pillow). Can anyone explain how these companies get away with charging so much?

[el_bryanto]

1. Because the Insurance is paying for most of it

It is a messed up system; but the Health Insurance system allows prices to get jacked up to enormous levels.

Bryant

[PoliticAverse]

30. I wonder what Insurance would have negotiated with them as a final price. n/t

[NYC_SKP]

2. A bloated industry where vendors AND service providers have conspired with underwriters.

to sell $25/dose Tylenol.

It's not much different from the $250 hammer sold to the Army.

It happens in other industries, as well, though not to the same extremes.

[DetlefK]

3. It's the fault of the insurance companies:

They could challenge and monitor the prices and bully the medical companies into cheaper prices, but that takes a huge bureaucracy and costs time and money. (Similar problem was just uncovered in Germany.)

OR they could leave everything as is and demand higher premiums.

[FreakinDJ]

14. Sorry but your Wrong on this one

Hospitals and Medical providers won the right through the courts to over charge insurance companies to make up for "Unreimbursed Medical Cost". Granted no one has monitored just how much goes to recoop unreimbursed cost/expenses vs: Corporate profits ...

[truedelphi]

26. That is a very interesting bit of information.

And it is quite a bit of money that we re talking about.

So much money that some well trained accountants have gone into business for themselves, doing nothing but helping former patients figure out the pages and pages of hospital billing items via their audits.

One woman I knew who had that job noticed that her client was paying for three separate circumcisions for her infant son.

[MineralMan]

4. Even batteries for medical devices have two prices.

If you buy a battery for some medical device at the medical specialty store, you'll pay many times its actual price. Many times. Instead, get the number off the battery and shop for it online. Same battery, same manufacturer...much lower price online. I've seen price differences up to 1000%.

[BlueJazz]

9. Damn! 10X ??...geez....I believe it. incredible.

[MineralMan]

12. Yup. A relative of mine, who is no longer with us,

had to use one of those voice devices after throat surgery so she could speak. If she bought the battery for it at the medical store, it was $15, back in the 1970s. I looked at the battery, and then went to the local Radio Shack, where the identical battery from the same manufacturer was $1.39. I bought several for her. Sadly, she didn't live long enough to use all of them.

I haven't priced such batteries for some time, but I'm sure the situation hasn't changed. Medical supply store have enormous markups on most things, and when you can find equivalent items in other places, you can realize great savings.

Still, some specialty medical devises use proprietary battery designs, so that won't always work.

[MineralMan]

16. Here's another example. Compare the batteries at the two URLs

http://www.batterybay.net/Battery-for-Welch-Allyn-60700-70200-p/mdcs-wb720md.htm?gclid=CNHb6OuZ2rkCFe1DMgodAQUAFw

http://www.bbclightingandsupply.com/product_p/72000.htm

[BlueJazz]

24. Geez...and what's also rather funny..If you click on the less expensive battery.....

..(Where it says "Larger&quot ..You actually get a larger Image !

On the rip-off battery, if you click on the larger image, it puts up an image with the same exact size.
It's like the sorry bastards even fuck you out of a larger image. LOL!

[revolutionbrees]

5. So many layers of bureacracy

My daughter had hyperemesis when she was pregnant, could not keep anything down for 48 hours. She went to the ER, they told her if she could drink a Sprite and keep it down, she could go home, otherwise she would be admitted and start IVs. She drank the Sprite, sat in the room for 30 minutes then was released. In addition to urinalysis and blood work charges, the detailed bill showed a charge of $87 for "additional testing supplies". I asked my cousin at the hospital what that meant and she said that was the charge for the soft drink.

[truedelphi]

28. Intersting story. And

Welcome to DU.

[BlueJazz]

6. Yeah..Funny you mentioned pillows. One of my customers told me she paid 87 bucks for her ....

...wheelchair pillow. I looked up the price (I was fixing her computer) and saw the same brand at Target for 14 for the cheap one and 19.97 for the high-end one which looked EXACTLY like hers...same label and stitching and thread color.

Amazing...isn't it ??

[rrneck]

7. Enron economics. nt

[Nuclear Unicorn]

8. Free markets are the debbill! Must have law pad corporate coffers to keep us free!

[customerserviceguy]

32. Medical pricing has very little to do with a 'free' market

It's the most arbitrary thing in the country, unless you count airline seats.

[Bluenorthwest]

10. Corruption allows them to get away with this shit.

nt

[Egalitarian Thug]

11. They get away with it because they are essential to pumping the prices as high as possible,

as that translates to greater profits for everybody from the device manufacturer to the insurance company writing the checks.

One of the worst things about the ironically mis-named ACA is the cap limiting profits to a percentage of dollars spent.

[Lee-Lee]

13. Because when insurnace pays, individuals never look at cost

What you did was rare- 99% of people let insurnace bill it and as long as they don't pay out of pocket they don't care enough to look.

People only have incentive to care about costs when they pay them directly. The notion that these crazy costs drive up premiums for all is too abstract and removed from the reality of their immediate situation to matter.

It is the same with any insurance. If you damage your car and pay out of pocket, you will consider the costs of OEM vs aftermarket parts, settle for a blended partial paint job instead of full repaint, etc.
But when insurance pays, especially the other guys, the same people will insist on all factory repairs done ate the dealer, full paint jobs, etc.

Remove the customer from the payment loop and process and most stop caring enough to look at costs.

[Sheepshank]

15. ...and if you have an HSA card

you could charge it to your medical expense account too.

So much is so wrong with the system

[nashville_brook]

17. also best way to get TENS unit refill pads. way cheaper.

[REP]

36. My insurance covers DME, which includes TENS unit and pads

As well as my BiPAP and masks. I'm very lucky; while the TENS equipment isn't very pricey, the BiPAP stuff is.

I own the TENS and Bi/CPAPs (I now have three xPAPs from years of use) - I'm very fortunate.

[cbdo2007]

18. You can also get a $1,000 Espresso Machine on Amazon, but they have them at Kohl's for only

$89.

Where's the outrage there??

[Nine]

21. Are you kidding? Your comparison has no relevance.

People can choose to pay what they want for an espresso machine, or not to get one at all. Patients frequently don't have that choice and often they may not realize that the equipment they're getting is no different from off-the-shelf equipment. When they showed me the $325 price tag on the splint, my first thought was that this must be something different from what I saw on Amazon - something far superior with medical benefits not immediately apparent to me. Nope. It's a bent piece of plastic with velcro straps to hold it in place. I asked them if it was any different from the ones on Amazon and they said no. So why would they even offer it to me? Why would they even consider allowing me to pay $65 out of pocket for something I could get for $20? I think that's a violation of the trust patients put in medical professionals.

[truedelphi]

29. because if you buy a 1,000 dollar item on

Amazon, presumably you are choosing to pay for it, and definitely your doing so won't up someone else's insurance premiums.

And then the hospital patient is a sitting duck and has no choice in the matter.

[Nye Bevan]

34. I'm guessing you're not comparing the same models. Here's what I found:

Kohl's $66.99:





Amazon $53.99:

[liberal_at_heart]

19. the hospital tried to make my husband take their medicine for his daily medications. He refused. It

took some arguing but they finally allowed him to take his medication. There was no way he was going to pay hundreds of dollars for a few pills when we had prescriptions already filled that I could bring from home and he could take. It is crazy what they are allowed to charge for things.

[GeorgeGist]

20. Greed is as American as ...

Guns and God.

[devils chaplain]

22. My E-stim kit (TNES unit) was $400 as a "prescribed" device...

After my pain began to subside, I took a look to see how much I could sell it for on eBay... it was 65 dollars.

[JCMach1]

23. Because medicine has NEVER truly been 'free market' and cannot be

WE need to stop imposing that ideology on the system... maybe then we can get better results.

[haele]

25. They'll claim it's because of the cost of the items that end up not being paid for -

You know, all that stuff the hospital says it gives out for free or cut rate.
That is, the items where insurance has negotiated the cost down to below wholesale, or the times where they discharge a patient that is going to be "billed" later who never ends up paying - the Medicare/Medicaid payments that barely pay for the doctor, and don't pay at all for any of the other services after all the costs get added out.
The charity patients that get the hardship write-off, the undocumented emergency room clients who walk in and walk out without paying, yada-yada-yada...

So they charge patients who have the means to pay for any item or service 20 times the going rate to supposedly pay for the 10 patients who aren't paying the going rate and the other 10 patients with insurance that forces the hospital to take less payment than what the item or service "cost".
Thus, when you go the emergency room for, say a critically high temperature, on top of all the tests, bed, and etc, your insurance gets billed $50.00 for two prescription-strength Tylenol pills (which you could get via prescription in a bottle of 60 at Walgreen's for $.02 a pill), which gets knocked down to their price of $12.00, and you still get the co-insurance bill of $5.00 that is payable to the hospital.

Haele

[Behind the Aegis]

27. $125 for a therapeutic prophylactic.

When I saw the charge, my first thought was; "I don't recall having relaxing sex with my doctor!" (OK, not how I really phrased it!) Upon asking what it was, I discovered "therapeutic prophylactic" is medical parlance for the shot plunger! Not the needle, not the medicine, the fucking PLUNGER! $125 dollars!!! Without knowing it, I did get screwed!

[gopiscrap]

31. Our health system is so fucked up

I was in a German hospital as a child for 6 months and the bill came to 168. 00 for my parents that would probably be 1700 today but still that's nothing.

[MrNJ]

33. Not just medical

Literally 10 minutes ago I was looking for some parts for my minivan.
At the dealer = $500
On Amazon = $120

[Hekate]

35. Personally I think it is rigged with the insurance companies. I use a CPAP machine at night....

In the early days I used to get an itemized copy of the invoice for supplies, and it about blew my socks off. Aside from the machine itself, which was covered by Blue Cross 100% and should last practically forever, there were the consumables like hoses, face masks, and filters. Those were also covered by Blue Cross. (We are no longer on Blue Cross, but stay with me.)

I truly wish I had saved some of those invoices from 9 years ago, because the only figure I remember is the recharge rate for the hoses: $60 for a plastic item made in China. The filters are made of foam and are smaller than 1" by 3" and a 3-pack of those was about $10. Stuff that cost pennies to make.

Every single item was similarly outrageously priced -- and Blue Cross apparently covered it 100%. The insurance company should have been screaming its head off. I was aghast. It wasn't just a case of knowing that if I were poor I'd just go have my stroke and die, it was the sense of the sheer dishonesty of it all.

The only way this makes sense is for it to be rigged. People without insurance pay the full price for things that cost pennies to produce -- or they just, you know, suffer and/or die.

I hate the insurance company system in this country as it has metastasized, but we are stuck with some version of it as long as the GOP runs Congress. I hope to God that eventually the ACA corrects the most egregious abuses.

I'm glad you researched your night splints on Amazon, and I'm glad you have found a reasonable source. I've had plantar fascitis in both feet at once, and ... well, never mind. Take care of yourself, and I hope you get well soon.

Hekate

[Nine]

37. Thanks, Hekate! (nt)