How much should a hip replacement cost? CBS News
How much should a hip replacement cost? Study raises more questions than answers – CBS News:
Paying cash for a procedure can get wild in terms of the prices. (They did this for a similar ailment and got similar results.)
Offering to pay cash, and pay up front will result in serious discounts, say 70%.
But this is still a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad world of medicine.
What’s missing is transparency. If you can’t figure out how much something is going to cost, how can you plan for it.
Oh, and here is a case in point on the Hip-to-be-squared problem. If hip is a pre-exiting condition, then you have to pay out-of-pocket. But, if you let your insurance laps, then you can not be denied… BUT in next year, 2014, more of Obamacare will kick in and then it’s no worries (maybe?).
This whole area of healthcare is fuzzy and morphing, so it really is not sane to try to make rational decisions.
Maybe the best idea is to go an medical tourism vacation. Trip it up to Canada, down to Costa Rica or drink it up in Spain. It seems that the pain before and after surgery, just might, kinda put a damper on the whole vacation thing though. But the $50-100,000 would be a nice incentive to enjoy the trip.
It’s going to be hard to bring healthcare costs under control when the mess in pricing and the lack of transparency is out of control.
It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World of medicine.