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It would be around $49 in today's dollars but still.
compared to
$166 now
Of course on a typical visit about 85 percent is covered by insurance and the consumer only pays 15% of it.
Wouldn't be surprised if the average co-pay after insurance is more than that.
Average cost of a public university was
Your thread topic is differently twisted.
I don't know of anyone who pays $166 for a doctor office visit.
Our family doctor charged $15 in 1979. The same year I paid $7.50 to $8.50 for concert tickets.
Today, general practitioners charge $35 to $45, and specialists a little higher. An ENT gets $50, while an oncologist gets $80. If you want to use the same "sports medicine" doctors that professional athletes here use, they charge $120, but for your tennis elbow, you can pay an orthopedics specialist who doesn't cater to the professional football, baseball or soccer team players just $75.
Concert tickets start at $75 for lawn or nose-bleed tickets, and $175 if you want to sit where you used sit for a ticket that cost only $7.50 to $8.50. I just paid $325 to see REO Speedwagon and Chicago and sit 2nd row stage center, while I paid only $8.50 to see Genesis on the Abacab Tour in the same seats in 1980.
The point being Americans are willing to pay far more for entertainment than they are for healthcare.
In high Cost-of-Living areas in the US, I would expect people pay more than what people here pay, perhaps even double, because, you know, the Cost-of-Living is higher. However, the majority of Americans are not paying $166 for a visit to their GP.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rebeldor
Blame Nixon and his destruction of free-market healthcare with his horrific HMO act.
Amen! I was really happy when I finished school and went to work in the 70's for a doctor who actually still accepted farm produce as payment for his services! When I had decided, in the 80's, to pursue my own career as a physician, I started seeing the bizarre changes that loomed with the HMO's, and decided to do something else for a living. Glad I made that choice.
Blame Nixon and his destruction of free-market healthcare with his horrific HMO act.
No. It was Lyndon Baines Johnson who signed the Medicare/Medicaid act in 1965, which put the kibosh on "free market" medical care. HMOs were designed to try to control runaway medical costs for corporations that paid the medical insurance bills for their employees. Note: you can't control costs with a "fee for service" + "usual and customary" 2nd party payment system.
I don't know of anyone who pays $166 for a doctor office visit.
Our family doctor charged $15 in 1979. The same year I paid $7.50 to $8.50 for concert tickets.
Today, general practitioners charge $35 to $45, and specialists a little higher. An ENT gets $50, while an oncologist gets $80. If you want to use the same "sports medicine" doctors that professional athletes here use, they charge $120, but for your tennis elbow, you can pay an orthopedics specialist who doesn't cater to the professional football, baseball or soccer team players just $75.
Concert tickets start at $75 for lawn or nose-bleed tickets, and $175 if you want to sit where you used sit for a ticket that cost only $7.50 to $8.50. I just paid $325 to see REO Speedwagon and Chicago and sit 2nd row stage center, while I paid only $8.50 to see Genesis on the Abacab Tour in the same seats in 1980.
The point being Americans are willing to pay far more for entertainment than they are for healthcare.
In high Cost-of-Living areas in the US, I would expect people pay more than what people here pay, perhaps even double, because, you know, the Cost-of-Living is higher. However, the majority of Americans are not paying $166 for a visit to their GP.
WUT? Please link me to 35-80 dollar visits to specialists and general practitioners. Are you talking about co-pays? I haven't had an office visit cost less than 150. Most are in the 2-300 dollar range.
I was a young married mom in the 70s who had tight hold of the budget and purse strings. A visit to the doctor for an ear infection was never that cheap. Granted it was cheaper than now but not that cheap.
WUT? Please link me to 35-80 dollar visits to specialists and general practitioners. Are you talking about co-pays? I haven't had an office visit cost less than 150. Most are in the 2-300 dollar range.
Its been more than a year since my last doctor visit (finally got rid of the infection that I had for 5 years) so I don't know what the current Medicare rates are.
At that time the base GP payment was around $60-$70, specialist $100+. However, if anything additional (like a test, xray, etc) was done, the total billing would increase (and sometimes a lot).
Last edited by Weichert; 10-13-2018 at 04:54 PM..
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