The most expensive item on their list is a Penile Prosthesis @ $15,425.00 

I hope it comes with attachments.

fluffy2097: for $50. We'll give you a bottle of vodka to drink, and a table leg to bite down on

More like "$300 surgery-grade" vodka, run through a micron filter and produced under aseptic conditions. Otherwise, you get the meningitis vodka.

Open pricing is a nice step forward, but this still isn't as beneficial as a true single-payer system would be.

Health care should not be a for-profit business.

With a true single payer system it would be easy to control costs, just state in law that all licensed medical facilities must accept MediCare for 100% of all procedures, and accept whatever MediCare pays as 100% fulfillment of the bill. Then, you just set the amount MediCare pays to make services affordable. Set an MRI at $500, fitting a cast at $100, complex surgery at $100/hr, etc, and set the prices MediCare will pay for drugs and that becomes all the pharmaceutical companies can ask.

Everyone is covered, costs are reduced, and hospitals will be forced to become more efficient to stay in business. Salaries for doctors, surgeons, and administrators will likely go down, but it would be for the common good.

jshine: k1j2b3: I looked it up. MRI machines cost between $1M and $3M. Do you know how many MRIs you'd have to do to recoup costs if you charged only $500 per MRI?

Not hard to calculate: $2000000/$500=4000 scans. At 1 hour per scan, assuming you used the machine for 8 hours/day, it would take 500 days to recoup the cost. Assuming it sits idle on weekends (i.e., not located in a hospital, but in a private radiology office), that's 100 work-weeks -- almost 2 years exactly. That's a very reasonable amount of time, actually.

Oh great... here comes another libtard with his "math" to try to make his point.

Why is it so hard for you libs to understand that no country can provide free healthcare for its citizens. It's impossible. That's why it's never been tried.
And don't start with the "They do it in Canada"... that's complete bullshiat... everyone knows that Canada isn't even a real place.

Dimensio: Rising_Zan_Samurai_Gunman: crazytrain: Open pricing would be a huge win for consumers. Just think of a travelocity-like site for commodity medical procedures and services. Show the prices for each provider along with a review. Sometimes I can find a way better airfare deal by traveling 90 minutes to the next closest city - would totally do the same for some types of medical services, but that's just me.

The problem is that most expensive medical services are usually in emergent or urgent care where you don't really have the luxury of shopping around.
This idea works well for elective procedures - not so good for any sort of emergency care, trauma, or expensive chronic treatment such as chemotherapy where the costs will always exceed the means of any average person.

Poor individuals should simply choose not to have cancer if they cannot afford it.

Now, for $100, I'll blast you with the malfunctioning microwave for an hour. For $500,000, I'll bring in a certified oncologist and properly calibrated equipment.