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Will hospital deal really materialize?
The American Hospital Association seal
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TEXT OF STORY
Kai Ryssdal: The economic news of the day is neither Michael Jackson nor Eric Schmidt. It is, instead, the health-care debate. Sometime soon, tomorrow perhaps, the White House is going to announce a deal with three major hospital associations.
The hospitals are going to voluntarily cut $155 billion from their government health-care bills over the next 10 years. That is, they're going to collect $155 billion less from the government than they ordinarily would. On the face of it that would appear to be a savings. Marketplace's Steve Henn reports from Washington though there is some concern those savings might never materialize.
STEVE HENN: Right now the debate over health-care reform is basically just a numbers game.
JOHN HALAHAN: I think the bill will certainly cost a trillion or more.
John Halahan is at the Urban Institute.
HALAHAN: So it's going to have to be paid for through some combination of savings from cutbacks to providers, and the rest is going to have to come out of new revenues.
So Halahan says the administration's been leaning on drug companies and hospitals to cut the fees they charge to the federal government for Medicare, Medicaid and prescription drugs.
A couple weeks ago drug makers promised to slice $80 billion off the government's health-care tab over 10 years. Tomorrow three large hospital associations are expected to announce they'll cut fees by $155 billion in the next decade.
Rick Curtis runs the Institute for Health Policy Solutions.
RICK CURTIS: A $100 billion here and a $100 billion there, and pretty soon you are talking about real money.
But will these savings materialize? Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee's not convinced.
CHUCK GRASSLEY: It doesn't mean anything unless you get the Congressional budget office to give it a score.
Grassley says when it comes to tallying possible savings in any new law the CBO is the ultimate scorekeeper. And he's not sure these voluntary industry promises will count.
GRASSLEY: Because if CBO can't score it, it's not worth the paper it's printed on.
And that will make health-care reform much harder to pass in Congress.
In Washington, I'm Steve Henn in Marketplace.
The hospitals are just scare of the public option; they want the public plan dead. The reason they fear the public plan more than anything is the price pressure it would put on them because of potential medicare rates.
The costs of health care in the US are not more because we get more care, they are more because they just cost more. The price for a appendicitis surgery in Europe's most expensive country was $2,700, the ticket price for patients in the US for the same standard operation was $15,000, and medicare paid $4,700 for hat operation. Which means that medicare pays almost twice for the same surgery than its counterparts in the most expensive Western Europe do.
The excuse about malpractice insurance is kind of fuzzy, you always hear Doctors complaining about how much they have to pay in absolute terms, but have you ever asked one how much as a percentage (%) of their revenue/income they pay for this type of insurance? My guess is that it is on the ballpark the same that any small business pays for liability insurance.
Here in the US we fear the hospitals and the Doctors, it is amazing that we see them as untouchable. The truth is that the hospitals are as guilty as the insurance companies in the disproportionate inflation that has lead to medical prices bubble.
I always wonder why hospitals are so fuzzy about telling you what the ticket price for a procedure (they break it down in several subcontractors confusing the total price). When the insurance company pays for the several different sub-contracts/sub-bills. Both, the insurance company and the hospital go to GREAT extends to hide the true cost from the patient.
The hospitals are just scare of the public option; they want the public plan dead. The reason they fear the public plan more than anything is the price pressure it would put on them because of potential medicare rates.
The costs of health care in the US are not more because we get more care, they are more because they just cost more. The price for a appendicitis surgery in Europe's most expensive country was $2,700, the ticket price for patients in the US for the same standard operation was $15,000, and medicare paid $4,700 for hat operation. Which means that medicare pays almost twice for the same surgery than its counterparts in the most expensive Western Europe do.
The excuse about malpractice insurance is kind of fuzzy, you always hear Doctors complaining about how much they have to pay in absolute terms, but have you ever asked one how much as a percentage (%) of their revenue/income they pay for this type of insurance? My guess is that it is on the ballpark the same that any small business pays for liability insurance.
Here in the US we fear the hospitals and the Doctors, it is amazing that we see them as untouchable. The truth is that the hospitals are as guilty as the insurance companies in the disproportionate inflation that has lead to medical prices bubble.
I always wonder why hospitals are so fuzzy about telling you what the ticket price for a procedure (they break it down in several subcontractors confusing the total price). When the insurance company pays for the several different sub-contracts/sub-bills. Both, the insurance company and the hospital go to GREAT extends to hide the true cost from the patient.
1st, they just announced this today. $155 billion with a B.
2nd. This report is crap. Why wouldn't it materialize?
This is your answer?
GRASSLEY: Because if CBO can't score it, it's not worth the paper it's printed on.
Why wouldn't they SCORE it?
3rd. JOHN HALAHAN and the RICK Curtis guys adds nothing to the report. The CBO said their insight scored a zero and that they owe us our time back.
