Are health care prices going up or going down?

[Recursion]

Bear with me

40 years ago, as a toddler, I had to have an x-ray. It cost $100 (my mother informs me). That would be about $350 adjusted for inflation.

I was at an imaging clinic yesterday (curse you, apnea!), and they listed their cash prices for people who didn't have or want to use insurance. A pediatric limb x-ray (what I had) was $200. A pediatric limb CT scan (which didn't exist 40 years ago, or at least wasn't yet widely available at all) cost $1500.

I don't know what language to use for this: I think the cost of any given treatment seems to be falling, but better treatments become available at a higher price than the less-good treatments they replace. But is that an example of the cost of healthcare going "up" or "down"?

[marylandblue]

1. Still a price increase, but you are buying years of life.

My mother has survived multiple rounds of cancer. She's gotten 15 more years of life using treatments that didn't exist 40 years ago, but the cost is well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, paid by that horrible beast, Medicare.

[Control-Z]

2. I was paying between $250 and $400 a month

(depending on the strength of this particular drug) 5 years ago. That same exact drug is now $30/mo. In fact, all my Rxs have gone down dramatically over the past 5 years.

My son's Obamacare policy actually went down last year too.

I don't know where they find all these stories of everyone drowning in ACA prices.

[McCamy Taylor]

4. This is insurance, not drug/health care prices. Some insurers court customers by having them pay

a co-payment for meds. If the drugs are ones that relatively young and healthy people need, the co-payments will be cheap. If it is a heart drug or cancer drug, the copayment may be much higher due to the insurer does not want to attract heart and cancer patients.

[McCamy Taylor]

3. Up up and away. Due to the Pharmacy Bros. Wall Streets serves the interest of stock holders

not patients. They will only drop prices if they have to do so to remain competitive. Whenever possible they will get together with the so called "competition" and fix prices instead. Note that once upon a time, doctors were not allowed to discuss their fees due to it was believed that this would lead to price fixing. But now that Wall Street has invested so heavily in US health care, monopolies and price fixing are the rule. That is why so many generic drugs are so expensive. "Professional courtesy" dictates that no Pharmacy Bro interfere with another Pharmacy Bro's ability to price gouge.

[riverine]

5. Generic drugs are cheaper than ever

My single prescription is $10 a month (without insurance).

I understand that biotech drugs that didn't exist 20 years ago can be very expensive.