Doctors Bidding for Patients
[George] Law, from Chicago, requested a colonoscopy on Medibid, and doctors around the country “bid” to perform it.
The winner: Dr. Scott Gibson, practicing half a country away here in Oregon. Gibson charges cash customers about $800 for a colonoscopy, a bargain compared to the $3,500 price tags Law was finding around Chicago.
“You might say come on, you can actually travel from Chicago to Oregon, rent a car, stay in a hotel and pay for your medical services? Not only did I come out ahead, it was less than half the price [of having the procedure done in Chicago],” Law said.
Where are the exchanges for this?
The website has several interesting details, most of which their pricing system.
http://www.medibid.com/pages/faq/
That price discrepancy is pretty wild!
Yeah, it is a pretty amazing difference what the market can make
medibid.com
http://www.medibid.com/pages/patients/
Looks pretty interesting. Not sure what was wrong with taking this approach. Public exchanges should work much more efficiently.
Their pricing for Doctors is pretty subtantial, especially if you are running a hospoital. 5 grand for a hospital to bid on cases though is pretty amazing.
$5,000 for 76+ doctors to have a years worth of visibility on the exchange seems pretty cheap to me.
Medical tourism at work, at least you don’t have to go to India!
Unless you want to, which you could!
And then we are told medicine is different than other services and speak of a “market” for healthcare is silly. If that is true, how come these stories show up? If that were true, how come there is concierge medicine?
I don’t understand either. My first instinct is that they classify it as “different” because it is a universal need. But water, electricity, and food all fall under the same category and a market exists for each.
Domestic medical tourism could be very powerful. Let us keep encouraging it.
i would be delighted to see hospitals almost driven out of business because they can no longer gouge patients on outpatient care.
This must be done in combination with tiered pricing in health insurance– where the insurer pays only the low bid amount. Car insurance for repairs has worked this way for decades.
We will need to see some ‘tourism’ in each city though. Few working Americans can take time off and drive across country to save dollars. Also there is some comfort in having one’s family close by and knowing one’s doctor.
We have a ways to go to make health care into Price Line.com.