Government agency exposes real, actual prices for medical services

[Pointedstick]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/0 ... 32678.html

Even within the same metropolitan area, hospitals charge prices that differ by staggering degrees for the same procedures. People without health insurance pay vastly higher costs for care when less expensive options are often available nearby. Virtually everyone who seeks health care winds up paying inflated prices in one form or another as these stark disparities in price sow inefficiencies throughout the market.

While this basic picture has emerged as the consensus reality among health care experts, their evidence has been primarily anecdotal. Hospitals have protected their price lists -- documents known as charge masters -- as closely guarded secrets.

Their prices are secret no more.

Perhaps this will begin to being sanity by transforming the market for health care into, you know, an actual market for health care! With prices and everything.

If you ask me, this is the best thing the Obama administration has done so far. Huge upside potential for the entire country here.

[WiseOne]

I saw this on the news.  This is going to be a gold mine of info, and an embarrassment for some places that frankly deserve it. 

I used the NYTimes map to check out some local hospitals, and was surprised to find that the ones that charged the most were not the big teaching hospitals.  That surprised me because insurance companies have been systematically "blacklisting" teaching hospitals in the belief that they're a lot more expensive.  The result of that has been to limit people's access to high tech/tertiary care that isn't available outside of these academic centers.  (or that shouldn't be - I can tell you a lot of horror stories about what happens when Bob's House of Neurology tries to do epilepsy surgery procedures, for example). 

The most expensive ones were private hospitals in wealthy suburbs, the kind that advertises on highway billboards.  And that transfer their disastrously managed mistakes to us.

[Greg]

Way to go government. I think this might help in a long road towards competitive pricing models and open-models of pricing. Fingers crossed. Now I know where to go when I get my lobotomy

[smurff]

The Obama administration shared the data in advance with The Huffington Post, The New York Times and The Washington Post.

That TPTB considers the Huffington Post to be in the same league as the Washington Post and the New York Times is an interesting fact in itself.

[RuralEngineer]

The bad thing is, there's a certain amount of medical care that people aren't in a position to shop around for.  If I need a new car, I can delay my purchase until I can find the best deal (most of the time) and the prices are readily available.  I also have complete choice as to where I buy.  For medical care most people have few options due to their insurance and are limited by urgency or distance.  Then there's the fact that you don't know what you need up front in most cases and prices are not available.

It's a racket.

[Pointedstick]

IMHO, the urgency of most medical care is overblown. If it's not bleeding or life threatening, it can usually wait a bit. Were prices widely available, people could shop around and find their own intersection of price, quality, and reputation, just like they do for every single other product. And for conditions where urgency demanded immediate care, that sounds like a perfect use for real, actual insurance. Availability of multiple options is generally very good in cities and towns; it's only rural areas where people are under-served and there may be only a few hospitals or clinics. But then again, that's true of every brick-and-mortar store in rural areas.

I really honestly do think a great deal of health care delivery could work much better if it was an actual market rather than a government-supported cartel. This welcome burst of price transparency is a great start.

[dualstow]

A friend emailed me that article yesterday.

Very interesting for me, as I'm paying for insurance and much of my medical bills out of pocket.

[Greg]

The only thing is this is a list that wouldn't cover a lot of the things I'd expect to have for myself, these seem more like older person issues. For instance, if I break a bone, or a concussion, or a nailgun wound to the leg, etc., where are the cheaper places to go?

[Pointedstick]

The only thing is this is a list that wouldn't cover a lot of the things I'd expect to have for myself, these seem more like older person issues. For instance, if I break a bone, or a concussion, or a nailgun wound to the leg, etc., where are the cheaper places to go?

…which raises the too-infrequently discussed point that most health care spending is devoted to treating the symptoms of modern degenerative diseases and slightly prolonging the lives of dying people. That's the elephant in the room when we grouse about health care costs.