Whoa! If you didn't think we needed serious Medicare reform, check this out.

[Lemon Drop]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonk...0/?hpid=z1

Newly released data about what hospitals around the country are billing for identical procedures. In some cases, hospitals in the same city have a price difference of $100K, for the same procedure.

Hospitals have never been required to release this master pricing data before - and now we see why they kept it such a closely guarded secret.

There can certainly be valid reasons for price differences, but there's obviously some serious gouging going on here that could be curtailed.

And of course, it's the uninsured who suffer the most for this, though it's obvious are lot of us are overpaying, badly, for healthcare.

[cbelt3]

Hmm. Interesting. Thanks. Note that there are a lot of caveats and modifiers... Medicare does not pay full boat, and NOR do the uninsured (in most cases). I've found that the "Hospital Bill" is mostly a work of fiction.. it's a starting point on negotiations.

But this clearly illustrates the complexity issues surrounding providing services. And it's not just hospitals or doctors. Every organization has a different cost structure, and different price points for what may even be the same effective service.

Go to Joe Lawyer LLC to fill out a will, and he'll charge you $200. Go to Jones Day and they'll charge you $10,000. (And usually have a paralegal making $10 per hour do the work).

[Lemon Drop]

But if taxpayers were paying the Jones Day bill, you'd hope that somebody would shop around....

[cbelt3]

Lemon Drop wrote:
But if taxpayers were paying the Jones Day bill, you'd hope that somebody would shop around....

Uhm... forgot how the "Beltway Bandits" work, have you ? Legal and Consulting fees are often on a no-bid basis. Huge law companies make huge money off Uncle Sam and all his nieces and nephews that pay his bills.

[davester]

cbelt3 wrote: But this clearly illustrates the complexity issues surrounding providing services. And it's not just hospitals or doctors. Every organization has a different cost structure, and different price points for what may even be the same effective service.

You seem to be buying into the smoke, mirrors and FUD that the heatlhcare providers use to overcharge us. This "it's too complicated, you could never understand" meme is just a smokescreen to hide behind. Hospitals are just like any other business. They have services to render, staff to pay, supplies to buy, and overhead. It's been well documented that there are healthcare providers out there who overcharge for services and/or overprescribe unnecessary services just to add to the profits. Transparency and standardization of billing are direly needed if we're ever to get the out-of-control healthcare business back to some level of sanity and service to the citizenry.

[Lemon Drop]

Yes, I highly recommend these articles, the most detailed so far are in the Washington Post. HuffPo and NYTimes also have it.

Note how much more for-profit hospitals are charging for the same procedures, in the same area. Sometimes the hospitals are just across the street from each other, with wildly different prices. What other expensive service would we consume and have no idea ahead of time what the charge was, or how much competitors charged?

The ugly truth is that we do NOT have a free market health care system, not even close. We have a system that abuses both the consumers and the providers, in the name of profit.

[Ted King]

Free market pricing doesn't come close to working well when a person needs emergency or urgent care. So at a minimum, I would like to see a law that says in at least emergency care cases that a person needing emergency care and doesn't have insurance cannot be charged more than the median rate the hospital charges for bulk buyers.

[Dennis S]

Call a hospital's main number and ask how much a gallbladder removal surgery (or your procedure of choice) costs and see what answer you get.

[DeusxMac]

Lemon Drop wrote:

Newly released data about what hospitals around the country are billing for identical procedures. In some cases, hospitals in the same city have a price difference of $100K, for the same procedure.

I believe the appropriate term is, charging "what the traffic will bear."

Barron's Business Dictionary:
A policy of charging to the limit that customers will pay. Discussed in connection with products that seem to be overpriced.

[cbelt3]

davester.. I'm not disagreeing with you. I find the complexities frustrating to not end. Even our own vaunted Cleveland Clinic, whose billing pratices are supposedly 'fair' and what not, is guilty of this sort of nonsense. I remember going through my mother in law's hospital bills from them, and ended up challenging about half of the items. Including care for four days AFTER she died. I ended up negotiating a settlement and paid them off.