Intransparent health care costs

In the US, the very same blood test can cost $19 at one clinic and $522 at another clinic just blocks away - and nobody knows the difference until they get a bill weeks later. Sometimes its cheaper to pay cash than to use an insurance.

For me, this seems like a broken system. Now, journalist Jeanne Pinder says it doesn't have to be this way.



She's built a platform that crowdsources the true costs of medical procedures and makes the data public, revealing the secrets of health care pricing: https://clearhealthcosts.com

 

Health insurance led to the upward spiral of costs. Government healthcare sent it through the roof. If it's just numbers on a piece of paper nobody cares. When you paid it yourself then costs stayed under market control.
AMA had a real coup putting this scam together.

 

One of the big pharmaceutical companies (revenue 2017: 22.871 billion) announced that it now will sell a generic version of its own best-selling insulin brand Humalog for half off - $137 versus $275.

Wow. That seems generous.

Until you start to research. In 2001, they raised the price from $35 to $275.

In Germany the list price of a vial of Humalog is $55 including taxes and markup fees. Oh my.

 

Insulin is a scam. No difference in how its manufactured since they found a way to make it from algae decades ago.
But it's a forced market since people with type 1 diabetes die without it.