Question about places like Private Labs MD

[JohnnyBreeze]

I've never used one of these sites before and I couldn't find the answer on their FAQ page. Are the prices they state just for the bloodwork orders and then you have to pay for the tests at the collection site, or are the prices for both the orders and the tests?

Thanks,
-J.

[JohnnyBreeze]

That's good, but here is why I asked the question. They use LabCorp as the draw site. That's the same place I go when my doctor orders bloodwork. On Private Labs, their Vitamin D test ranges from $65-95 depending on the type. When I just had bloodwork done from the doctor, my insurance wouldn't cover that test, and I would have had to pay $385 out of pocket. Other tests that weren't covered were a lipid profile - $135 OOP, $54 at PMD and Prostate Specific Antigen: $150 OOP, $51 at PMD.

I had the option to refuse, so I just refused the Vitamin D and let them do the others. I haven't gotten a bill yet and this was almost 2 months ago, so maybe they did get covered somehow. Regardless, this is one of the problems with the US Healthcare System. Anyway, if I do get a bill, next time I'll just do the tests that are covered, then come back home and order the ones that aren't covered through Private MD and go right back.

[JohnnyBreeze]

Damn, $225 for an MRI, around here they will bill $1800 and charge around $800 cash. And that's for just about any place you go whether it's a 2T, 3T, or upright machine.

[JohnnyBreeze]

You have to ask for the self pay price explicitly. But some places are like that. I was stunned that the price was so low.

Yeah, good for you man. Those are rock bottom prices. Just about everything physical thing in the healthcare system is marked up hundreds or thousands of percent. However, MRI's are very expensive to own and operate. They cost between 1 and 3 million depending on how sophisticated the machine is, they require a specially built room (upwards of a few hundred thousand), use a ton of electricity, and then the staff that operate them have to be factored in. So a facility that has one or two machines could take well over 5-8 years just to break even, even at double your price. That's assuming they are open 5 days a week, and average around 6 patients a day on each machine due to the different lengths of time each test takes. I've had one take over 2.5 hours before.

I would see if that facility is owned by a larger healthcare company that might have facilities for different areas of medicine. If they do, any test you have to have, check and see if they own a facility that provides it.

To go off on a tangent though, while I think the markups are what's contributing to the breakdown in our healthcare system, I don't think doctors and surgeons get paid enough for their actual services. For my brain surgery, the hospital got $30,000 while the surgeon got $3,500. He was one of about 5 of the leading specialists in the country for what I had to have done. He only does surgery 1 day per week and only two surgeries per day. The rest of the week he is seeing patients. Forty grand a month sounds like a lot, but he has to pay for his practice and ridiculous malpractice insurance costs. I think a doctor cutting open your skull and messing with your brain should make more that what the hospital charges for a room for one day. Also, office visits are getting so expensive because you have to pay for the ever increasing staff doctors have to hire who are only there to handle insurance claims, do prior authorizations for prescriptions, and keep up with the always changing paperwork / records regulations. It's becoming so expensive to be a doctor that people aren't going into medicine for that reason alone.

Sorry, I was venting quite a bit because I've been going through the system so long that it upsets me that we have the most expensive healthcare system in the world, but in the most comprehensive study that I could find, we ranked 37th in overall healthcare system performance. No matter what metrics different lists use to range the best systems in the world, I haven't seen one where we even break the top 10. Here's a link to the first study I was talking about if anyone is interested. It a scientific study, so it's very long, boring, and some parts are hard to understand, but I don't think there is a better measurement. https://www.who.int/healthinfo/paper30.pdf