Hacker News Reader

Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

Here in Germany, we have something called "Gebührenordnung für (Tier)Ärzte" (fee catalogue for (veterinary) doctors).

Everything you can think of has a standardized pricing set, with the option to go up to 3.5x the standard rate for difficult procedures.

Kind of prevents that bullshit mentioned in the article; also, national health insurance covers nearly everything that's medically neccessary and deductibles are highly limited.

View on HN

In BC (and I assume other Canadian provinces) the dental association publishes an annual fee guide. They recommend that dentists charge the suggested fees, but they do not require it. Many insurance companies use the suggested fees as limits on how much they will pay for certain procedures. But patients who are paying cash don't know how much the "suggested" rate is for the services they received -- unless they borrow a copy from their local library, since the dental association explicitly refuses to put the guide online. (Their argument is that the fee schedule is too complicated for patients to understand.)

So despite having nominally standardized pricing, in practice there's nothing keeping pricing standardized beyond what insurance companies are willing to pay for their clients.

Ontario has it posted prominently. The top Google result is the official PDF. It's only 76 pages.

BC's page has an FAQ saying public library and that its over 1400 pages.

http://www.health.gov.on.ca/en/pro/programs/dental/docs/hso_...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com