health insurance: a sucker’s game

Interesting article (it was originally posted in the Financial Times) and a lively discussion to follow. Some of it seems familiar: the anecdote about flashing $14,000 to cover a $41,000 hospital bill, with odds the hospital would mark it as paid in full, sounds familiar. I recall reading through a several page bill and noting thousands of dollars in “miscellaneous” charges, some repeated verbatim. I marked the bill down accordingly and paid it, with nary a murmur from the hospital. As I noted in an earlier entry, when you have this complicated chain of relations, there’s no accountability and none of the usual pressure to control costs.