ACZoom  ·  Archive-2016

Lahey Clinic is a large hospital organization, just outside Boston.

They have a cozy relationship with the insurance companies. With insurance, consumers can reap advantages - the rates billed are quite low and certainly reasonable.

But Lahey Clinic completely turns a deaf ear when the patient is paying out of their own pocket. Outrageous bills are presented, and they refuse to offer any consideration at all when it is the lone patient asking them to be reasonable.

If the insurance company called, they would slash their rates by a lot. When a patient calls, they say no reduction is possible - and the patient has to pay the highly inflated, outrages list prices. This is a perverted system - there is no way any consumer can make a dent in the way medical system billing occurs in the US.

This is why a single payer system makes far more sense - medical service is not like purchasing cars or furniture - there is no way for the consumer to make any dent in the transactions involving such huge medical enterprises.
And surely if single payer is not acceptable, we can design a system where everyone gets to pay what insurance companies pay for medical treatment? Right now the hospitals soak the people who are not insured - essentially, robbing the self-insured and the uninsured to pay for the insured. Of course, they are also robbing the taxpayers in this system.