I used to be a libertarian. Then the US healthcare system taught me how wrong I was
I needed a CT scan on my neck — and I opened the door to a Kafka-esque nightmare
Adam Weinstein
New York
2 days ago
The task seemed easy enough. “I want a CT scan of your neck,” the specialist told me. After months of tonsillitis, sore throats, and unnerving fatigue, I’d grown edgy about the hard lump on my neck — enough to make an appointment with him in December, before my health insurance had even kicked in. He’d looked down my gullet, but held off on running any tests, telling me to come back in January when it wouldn’t cost me so much. A month later, he now agreed, it was time for some advanced imagery of the mass, just to be sure.
This shouldn’t be hard. The insurance policy I’d gotten — for $557 a month, on the Healthcare.gov exchange, since I worked remotely for my employer as a contractor, sans benefits — covered the hospital across the street, operated by my specialist’s healthcare group; I could walk over, get the scan, and he could access the imagery instantly.
But of course, as hundreds of millions of Americans know, nothing in our privately managed healthcare
system is that easy. The radiologist across the street considered me a “hospital outpatient,” so my insurance treated the office as an out-of-plan provider, which would cost me thousands upfront. The radiologist, however, did offer me a cash “self-pay” rate of $300 for the procedure.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “How come self-pay is so much cheaper than if I use my insurance?”
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/us-healthcare-medicare-for-all-ct-scan-cost-libertarian-socialist-a9297721.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
I could have gone on for paragraphs about the government's role in regulating the economy. I went simplistic basically because I didn't have time to do more.
