Medical costs

[The Nature Boy 4,224]

I am interested in perspective on this. I am betting we will cross all over the lib vs Conservative on this issue.

I went to the dentist last week. It appears have to have two molars extracted and implants are the way to go. The total treatment plan is 9000.00. That's right 9000 dollars. The procedure requires about 2.5 hours of the doctors time total and 2 Visits. Maybe 3.

So I start researching and find out that Mexico and Costa Rica have top notch Dental practices that can do the total procedure for about 1900.00. Figure in two trips to beautiful Costa Rica (with a little side vacation thrown in) and you are looking at about 4000.000 total.

This is not about universal health care, because Dental insurance is pretty much does not exist in any meaningful form in this county. The best plans usually pay a max of 1500.00 annually and 1 filling and a crown eats that up. So most dental care is out of pocket or the majority of it. The 1000-1500 cap has not changed since the 70's.

No here is my thing. When I was young it was fair to say about 80% of the people in health care where care givers. Now it is reversed. My Dentist office had what appeared to be about 8 people doing billing, insurance , receptionist Etc. In the days of yore it was 2 Dentist , 2 Hygienist and 1 receptionist. You paid her maid your appointment and left.

How much would it lower the cost of Medicine if we had insurance for serious illness and put it on the consumer to do what I did . Shop and make smart decisions. I bet if we did some Dentist would figure out a way to do 2 implants for closer to 4-5K.

I think Dental care is more out of reach of more Americans than health care. They don't have dental ER's you either pay or go without. Most Dentist not are working only 28-32 hour weeks.

Something is bad wrong when you can fly to a third world country and get superior care for 70% less money.

P.S. - I plan to have Lasik surgery while in the Philippines. 400-500 per eye with state of the art equipment. would cost 5K here. Insurance is not the problem it's the cost of health care. I don't think more regulation is going to fix that .

[james&olya 1,121]

I am interested in perspective on this. I am betting we will cross all over the lib vs Conservative on this issue.

I went to the dentist last week. It appears have to have two molars extracted and implants are the way to go. The total treatment plan is 9000.00. That's right 9000 dollars. The procedure requires about 2.5 hours of the doctors time total and 2 Visits. Maybe 3.

So I start researching and find out that Mexico and Costa Rica have top notch Dental practices that can do the total procedure for about 1900.00. Figure in two trips to beautiful Costa Rica (with a little side vacation thrown in) and you are looking at about 4000.000 total.

This is not about universal health care, because Dental insurance is pretty much does not exist in any meaningful form in this county. The best plans usually pay a max of 1500.00 annually and 1 filling and a crown eats that up. So most dental care is out of pocket or the majority of it. The 1000-1500 cap has not changed since the 70's.

No here is my thing. When I was young it was fair to say about 80% of the people in health care where care givers. Now it is reversed. My Dentist office had what appeared to be about 8 people doing billing, insurance , receptionist Etc. In the days of yore it was 2 Dentist , 2 Hygienist and 1 receptionist. You paid her maid your appointment and left.

How much would it lower the cost of Medicine if we had insurance for serious illness and put it on the consumer to do what I did . Shop and make smart decisions. I bet if we did some Dentist would figure out a way to do 2 implants for closer to 4-5K.

I think Dental care is more out of reach of more Americans than health care. They don't have dental ER's you either pay or go without. Most Dentist not are working only 28-32 hour weeks.

Something is bad wrong when you can fly to a third world country and get superior care for 70% less money.

P.S. - I plan to have Lasik surgery while in the Philippines. 400-500 per eye with state of the art equipment. would cost 5K here. Insurance is not the problem it's the cost of health care. I don't think more regulation is going to fix that .

Are you serious? You point out how, without any significant insurance, dental care is exorbitantly priced! Than you make a leap of logic to suggest that if medical care were handled similarly a totally different outcome might ensue, that is, prices would drop substantially. Talk about errors of logic!!! And I also doubt very many people are ready to head to Costa Rica for dental or medical care.

[Neonred 3,648]

Be careful. Do you know anything about the dentist and dental care you will get in Costa Rica or worse yet Mexico? Outside of what you may have read on the internet?

I think you should shop around a little here too. 9000 is a bit steep for two implants. I generally do that for at least 1/3 less.

I just finished putting one child through dental school this year and the tuition alone for the four years of dental school was close to $280k. Add in living expenses and don't forget to include the four years of undergraduate university, and you have one incredible cost. That just gets you a degree. Then shell out several grand for licensing exams, etc etc. Not many are able to then open a practice. You will notice a lot of corporate dental offices opening.

Of course I am old school. Just me, my receptionist (my wife), an assistant, and two hygienists. I work hard to keep my overhead low, but I do know of many offices that have overhead nearing 90%. Just incredible. 28-32 hours??? Oh I wish!

I can tell you one thing, in my office and most others that accept insurance, dealing with insurance companies is the number one headache without a doubt.

[The Nature Boy 4,224]

Are you serious? You point out how, without any significant insurance, dental care is exorbitantly priced! Than you make a leap of logic to suggest that if medical care were handled similarly a totally different outcome might ensue, that is, prices would drop substantially. Talk about errors of logic!!! And I also doubt very many people are ready to head to Costa Rica for dental or medical care.

I was not by any means advocating insurance go to a dental type system. I really was not advocating anything, I was explaining the situation and asking opinions. What we have know is not working for sure.

I do know this. Back before we had managed care our health care costs were a lot less. It seems to me that when yo have 4-5 people in a 3 doctor office just to do admin coding and Insurance and the AVG benefit is less than 1500 a year, it does not make sense.

I think maybe what would work is insurance being just that. Something that would kick in if you had a big expense. Then it just pays a flat going rate. Get the consumer involved in the process and if they can get it done cheaper they save money. Too many admin people in health care now.

[The Nature Boy 4,224]

Be careful. Do you know anything about the dentist and dental care you will get in Costa Rica or worse yet Mexico? Outside of what you may have read on the internet?

I think you should shop around a little here too. 9000 is a bit steep for two implants. I generally do that for at least 1/3 less.

I just finished putting one child through dental school this year and the tuition alone for the four years of dental school was close to $280k. Add in living expenses and don't forget to include the four years of undergraduate university, and you have one incredible cost. That just gets you a degree. Then shell out several grand for licensing exams, etc etc. Not many are able to then open a practice. You will notice a lot of corporate dental offices opening.

Of course I am old school. Just me, my receptionist (my wife), an assistant, and two hygienists. I work hard to keep my overhead low, but I do know of many offices that have overhead nearing 90%. Just incredible. 28-32 hours??? Oh I wish!

I can tell you one thing, in my office and most others that accept insurance, dealing with insurance companies is the number one headache without a doubt.

You are not in driving distance of middle GA are you ???? LOL

I agree I need to do my homework, but there are some fine dentist in Costa Rica Mexico and the Philippines. BTW thank you for responding I am glad to hear input from a provider. As for overhead I am sure the Docs (who by the way are fine Docs) have enormous overhead. There are 3 of them and they have a staff I a guessing of at least 10. With the avg benefit only 1000-1500 dollars a year it hardly seems worth all the coding and billing. Seems it would be cheaper to not accept insurance, offer a discount and let the patient file. 1 root canal and crown wipe out my 1k Benefit. Then I don't have enough to pay for the second cleaning.

I am looking at the treatment plan. 936 for the extraction, 7656 for the two implants and crowns. I make a good living,and dental care is even getting too costly for me. I don't understand how the poor get dental care at all. I told the lady when she quote me the cost, that it my out of pocket would be less for a liver transplant.

My dentist works 1/2 day during the week and the are closed Friday, Sat Sun.

It just makes good sense that if Ican get the total procedure done for 1800 bucks in Costa Rica. Then throw in another 2000 for the two trips. I am only at 3800 and had two little vacations. A savings of almost 5 K. My wife also needs a implant. So if I carry her the saving come up in the 8K range.

A person can save almost 40K on a whole mouth restoration. Now of course if I could find a good local dentist that could do it in the 4-5K range I would stay home.

I know you guys spent a lot of money in School and work hard. What is the Answer ? I don't know. I do know that when over 500K Americans go to 3rd world countries to get good affordable dental care something is broken.

Edited September 10, 2012 by Run Herschel Run

[james&olya 1,121]

I was not by any means advocating insurance go to a dental type system. I really was not advocating anything, I was explaining the situation and asking opinions. What we have know is not working for sure.

I do know this. Back before we had managed care our health care costs were a lot less. It seems to me that when yo have 4-5 people in a 3 doctor office just to do admin coding and Insurance and the AVG benefit is less than 1500 a year, it does not make sense.

I think maybe what would work is insurance being just that. Something that would kick in if you had a big expense. Then it just pays a flat going rate. Get the consumer involved in the process and if they can get it done cheaper they save money. Too many admin people in health care now.

I do agree that the current system of a hodge-podge of various companies offering multitudes of different plans is a nightmare for billing specialists. The games that are played just trying to get payment are ridiculous. Single payer health and perhaps dental insurance with a defined benefit plan for all would save a huge amount in overhead. If this was administered by government like Medicare and publicly funded there could still be plenty of room for private companies to provide the extras, just like current medicare supplement plans do. Those who advocate retreating from the modest improvements offered by Obamacare back to the prior (in large part still current) system are wrong. We need to develop a more rational and cost effective system before the health and dental insurance and providers bankrupt us all, both personally and collectively!

Edited September 10, 2012 by james&olya

[Gary and Alla 3,694]

I am interested in perspective on this. I am betting we will cross all over the lib vs Conservative on this issue.

I went to the dentist last week. It appears have to have two molars extracted and implants are the way to go. The total treatment plan is 9000.00. That's right 9000 dollars. The procedure requires about 2.5 hours of the doctors time total and 2 Visits. Maybe 3.

So I start researching and find out that Mexico and Costa Rica have top notch Dental practices that can do the total procedure for about 1900.00. Figure in two trips to beautiful Costa Rica (with a little side vacation thrown in) and you are looking at about 4000.000 total.

This is not about universal health care, because Dental insurance is pretty much does not exist in any meaningful form in this county. The best plans usually pay a max of 1500.00 annually and 1 filling and a crown eats that up. So most dental care is out of pocket or the majority of it. The 1000-1500 cap has not changed since the 70's.

No here is my thing. When I was young it was fair to say about 80% of the people in health care where care givers. Now it is reversed. My Dentist office had what appeared to be about 8 people doing billing, insurance , receptionist Etc. In the days of yore it was 2 Dentist , 2 Hygienist and 1 receptionist. You paid her maid your appointment and left.

How much would it lower the cost of Medicine if we had insurance for serious illness and put it on the consumer to do what I did . Shop and make smart decisions. I bet if we did some Dentist would figure out a way to do 2 implants for closer to 4-5K.

I think Dental care is more out of reach of more Americans than health care. They don't have dental ER's you either pay or go without. Most Dentist not are working only 28-32 hour weeks.

Something is bad wrong when you can fly to a third world country and get superior care for 70% less money.

P.S. - I plan to have Lasik surgery while in the Philippines. 400-500 per eye with state of the art equipment. would cost 5K here. Insurance is not the problem it's the cost of health care. I don't think more regulation is going to fix that .

Alla and the boys get all their dental work done, except emergencies, in Ukraine every year. Virtually free except for the bribes we pay to get them in the front of the line (oh yes, the unintended consequences of "free" dental and eliminating "profit" from the medical field) They do the same for eye examinations. For myself and emergencies we use a local clinic associated with a medical/dental school and pay about 15% of the usual cost. We have no dental insurance and dental insurance has not been a priority for any government plan I have heard about either.

Were I you, though, I would have the molars extracted and be done with it.

Insurance IS a problem though. Our local hospital, and many others, give a 50% discount to uninsured patients who pay cash. Considering that many insurance plans pay only 50% of some procedures and services anyway...after deductibles, it makes insurance seem rather facetious. Insurance also requires doctors to practice "defensive" medicine to prevent lawsuits, and guess who pays for that? Malpractice insurance costs are ridiculous and guess who pays that?

ANY government plan also includes tort reform to eliminate frivilous lawsuits and restrict awards...why not implement that first?

[Penny Lane 8,159]

I've heard so many horror stories of people going to another country (ESPECIALLY Mexico) for medical procedures. Please be careful.

[sara..... 371]

it was going to cost my dad $10,000.00 to have his bottom teeth removed that was before adding in false teeth and a partial on the top.......we went to egypt cost of round trip ticket $1,800.00 cost of all dental work including partial and bottom false teeth about $900.00 great dental care excellent quality false teeth

sara

[The Nature Boy 4,224]

I do agree that the current system of a hodge-podge of various companies offering multitudes of different plans is a nightmare for billing specialists. The games that are played just trying to get payment are ridiculous. Single payer health and perhaps dental insurance with a defined benefit plan for all would save a huge amount in overhead. If this was administered by government like Medicare and publicly funded there could still be plenty of room for private companies to provide the extras, just like current medicare supplement plans do. Those who advocate retreating from the modest improvements offered by Obamacare back to the prior (in large part still current) system are wrong. We need to develop a more rational and cost effective system before the health and dental insurance and providers bankrupt us all, both personally and collectively!

Yo had me until you got to administered and funded by the government. surely your joking.

[Nina~ 431]

My dentist is pretty old school. Most of his equipment is from the 70's & 80's that still work just fine. He doesn't believe in buying state of the art equipment and pass down the costs to his patients. He charges $6 for an Xray, $85 for an hour of cleaning & $85-$100 for extracting wisdom teeth. He can keep his costs low by hiring 2 part time hygienists who also work the front desk. It is also pretty common for him to answer the phone while digging in my mouth Also, he refuses to deal with insurance companies which is also another reason he can keep the cost so low.

He was the only option I had while I was in college since I was broke most of the time and didn't have dental insurance, but I would never ever go to another dentist even though I make decent money now. I hope he never retires.

[웃 910]

Yo had me until you got to administered and funded by the government. surely your joking.

You should really look into the cost and quality of care in other economies similar to the US.

Not only is the quality better, it is much cheaper, and nobody is not covered.

Where To Escape the Individual Mandate

The Supreme Court's ruling upholding Obama's health care law on Thursday made some people so disillusioned with the United States that they posted on Facebook and Twitter that they were jumping ship and moving to Canada.

But Canada's health care system makes Obamacare look like the poster child for free market capitalism. Canada not only has an individual mandate requiring all residents to buy health insurance, but that insurance is government-run.

So if not America's northern neighbor, where can people looking for a reprieve from a government that will soon force them to buy health insurance turn?

Heading south to Mexico won't work. Nearly the entire Mexican population gets their health care from a Medicaid-like system funded by the government.

Europe isn't an option either. The health care systems in Britain, Denmark, Spain, Norway and Sweden are all funded by taxes much in the same way as public schools or the police force.

Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Sweden all mandatethat residents buy private insurance and those insurance companies are non-profits that are required to cover everyone and are highly regulated, giving governments the control to manage costs.

Even Singapore has a policy similar to Obamacare's individual mandate, requiring residents to set aside part of their incomes in personal savings accounts, which can be used to pay for health care.

"As far as I can tell, there's not really any developed country that doesn't have either a government-provided system or a mandate," said Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Libertarian Cato Institute who studies health policy.

Even with the individual mandate, the United States still has one of the most privately-run health care systems in the world, said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"We were very exceptional," Huang said of the U.S. "Among industrialized countries we were the only one that adopted the market-based system."

So where can people disillusioned by 'Obamacare' turn to find a country whose health care system has less government involvement than the United States?

"I can't name one," said Robin Osborn, vice president and director of The Commonwealth Fund's International Program in Health Policy. "It'd be more likely a third world country."

Haung suggested "maybe sub-Saharan Africa."

http://abcnews.go.co...21#.UE4Rb4qPVUw

Edited September 10, 2012 by ☠

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

Where To Escape the Individual Mandate

That's easy: Just move to the libertarian paradise. Somalia.

[Marilyn. 340]

you have to shop around for a good dentist. They all charge different prices. My husband went to one a few years ago and we ended up paying over $1000 bucks for a cleaning and a few cavity fillings. and that was after the insurance covered their part, they cover $1500 a year per person.

Earlier this year my husband and I both went to another dentist and we payed about $300 bucks for both of us. That included x-rays, deep cleaning and my husband had a couple of cavities filled. Although half of that amount was for this antibacterial stuff they put in the water that they used to spray into our mouths. Of course our insurance didn't cover that

Edited September 10, 2012 by Marilyn.

[Neonred 3,648]

I do agree that the current system of a hodge-podge of various companies offering multitudes of different plans is a nightmare for billing specialists. The games that are played just trying to get payment are ridiculous. Single payer health and perhaps dental insurance with a defined benefit plan for all would save a huge amount in overhead. If this was administered by government like Medicare and publicly funded there could still be plenty of room for private companies to provide the extras, just like current medicare supplement plans do.

As much as I hate to say it I tend to agree with you, except for the part about "administered by the government". To me that means "run as efficiently as SSA or USCIS"

Maybe we can subcontract it out to Canada as they have some experience with this issue. LOL

Edited September 10, 2012 by Neonred