>I still can't believe that you can not call up a doctor/clinic/hospital in US and get a price quote for something routine
You can. Routine, profitable procedures are not hard to arrange in the US. I have personally worked in a clinic where the exact experience described in this post happens every day.
>If you are a working, middle class person, the free market health care works extremely well.
It's pretty easy in most places in the world to get people to do something that makes them money, like the discectomy discussed here.
Managing a system where the poor and the unlucky get care is a little tougher. The US does it lousily, but so does most of the rest of the world. India doesn't do it at all.
> You can. Routine, profitable procedures are not hard to arrange in the US. I have personally worked in a clinic where the exact experience described in this post happens every day.
For the majority, this is simply not the case. I'm sure there are exceptions as our country is very large, but most people's experience would be very similar to the OPs. I'd suggest reading Healing of America by T.R. Reed if you're interested in the working of US compared to other systems.
For vast majority of the procedures and surgeries you cannot get any quote. I tried to get quote for the standard procedure (that they have performed 100s of times) via phone and in person in Dr's office in 4 different hospitals. All of them told me that they do not know the price, since it depends on what my insurance will cover. They said that they need to do evaluation, schedule the procedure, submit paperwork to the insurance company and then I can get the quote, which is crazy, because to schedule the procedure you need to go through pretty expensive evaluation process. Basically just to know the price you may need to spend couple thousand dollars.
This happened to most of the people that I know that needed some kind of quote from the hospital. The clinic you have worked was an exception.
You can. Routine, profitable procedures are not hard to arrange in the US. I have personally worked in a clinic where the exact experience described in this post happens every day.
>If you are a working, middle class person, the free market health care works extremely well.
It's pretty easy in most places in the world to get people to do something that makes them money, like the discectomy discussed here.
Managing a system where the poor and the unlucky get care is a little tougher. The US does it lousily, but so does most of the rest of the world. India doesn't do it at all.
edit:copy error