Comments by "SmallSpoonBrigade" (@SmallSpoonBrigade) on "Woman Charged $11 for \"crying during surgery\"?" video.

@reformcongress If the doctor is ordering it, there's not much difference. The doctor still needs to write that it's needed, send it to the pharmacy and have a nurse dispense it. There's very little difference between that and what happens if it's an actual prescription. The only real difference is in an outpatient setting where you can just go and buy the non-prescription medication anywhere you like and in any quantity you like without needing the bring the form with you.
2
The US isn't sue happy, despite what corporations like to claim. The doctors need malpractice insurance to cover the cost of being sued by the patient to get medical care for the mistake. In many cases, people are forced to sue in order to get insurance companies to pay up. Sometimes you get weird things happening like grandparents suing their grandchildren knowing that the insurance company requires it rather than just paying the claim. What's more, in terms of malpractice, it would be a lot less expensive if the medical treatment aspect of it wasn't being paid by private parties. In a universal health care system, the only need for malpractice insurance would be to cover the actual pain and suffering along with any reductions in earnings, not necessary the actual cost of care. The cost of care can be extreme in the US for some of these medical blunders.
2
@freethebirds3578 As opposed to the US where the private insurance companies just say yes to every reimbursement request? The fact of the matter is that in any system there are going to be limits placed on care. The only difference is who is placing the limits and to what extent.
2
That's not possible, insurance companies cover different things to different extents and one of the reasons why there are all these weird things that wind up on the bill is that the medical billing department basically submit a request for compensation for every possible aspect of the service that was provided. The insurance company then goes and decides which ones to pay and how much. The end result is that the doctor gets paid, but depending upon whom is paying, you'll see very different rates and different bits covered. It's also why you can negotiate medical bills down so much when you don't have insurance. They're sending out a bill as if you're going to submit it to an insurance company for reimbursement, they don't expect to collect on most of it, so you can pretty much immediately get them to drop most of that BS and come to a number closer to what it cost them to provide the service along with whatever reasonable overhead they need.
1
@rhondanighman Healthcare is probably the best possible example of something that shouldn't be governed by the free market. I had a heat stroke a decade back and wasn't able to communicate anything to anybody. They had to go through my wallet to figure out whom to contact about it. If there hadn't been any contact information that they could find, then it would have been a massive problem in terms of figuring out to do and what to pay for. There was little room to decline whatever testing and services the doctors wanted to do, or I could have been left permanently incapable of speech. This kind of scenario happens every day somewhere and repeatedly, yes for less serious situations a free market might sort of work, but even there the cost of deferred medical care is expensive.
1