 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Congress is afraid to allow for price transparency. One senatorial office told me that most of the congressman just aren't for price transparency. They are afraid that all the hospitals will go out of business
Of course, there are a lot of hospitals with giant profit margins. In fact, hospitals are among the most profitable of any industry in america. A lot of hospitals report profits in the 50% range. Find any industry that is higher. You simply can't do it.
Of course, the best hospitals are making the money. Like any industry, there are a lot of hospitals barely making it and a few that really make a lot.
Still, I think this fear is mostly unfounded. There are not enough doctors or hospitals to go around. Price transparency would make the price gougers go out of business or change their behavior. The majority of providers would stay in business simply because there is a shortage.
My opinion is that congress is scared to death of what will happen when people finally figure out how badly they are overpaying. It would create a lot of unhappy people that might vote them out of office. I think congress is simply afraid to own up to their price fixing
Does it really matter if some bad hospitals go out of business? In any competitive industry, the bad fail. It's what makes things improve. Are health care companies like new parents with newborn babies?
There are two congressman that like price tranparency. They are U.S. Senators Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, and Ron Wyden, D-Ore. They have introduced a bill to make medicare pricing transparent. If you want to improve price transparency, contact them.
While price transparency might happen for medicare, it's not likely to happen for private insurers. Many insurers will allow you to check pricing if you are a member for yourself. However, there is still no good way to shop around. The efforts at trasparency have pretty much been to appease the public. True transaprency is fought by the insurance companies at every turn.
The market is trying to solve the problem of price transparency. However, it is quite difficult for the market to do. Still, and to my gratitude, people are really trying to fix the problem. As a reminder, the data already exists. It can easily be made public. The only reason it is not is because congress is helping keep the market artificially high.
A team of journalists have been working on patients submitting their own data in a crowd sourced way to go around the insurance companies. Their website is http://clearhealthcosts.com. The also work with KQED in califnoria. You can see their site here: http://ww2.kqed.org/stateofhealth/2014/06/23/share-your-bill-make-health-costs-transparent-in-california/
This website allows you to look up procedures to see the fair pricing. If you know what you want, it can certainly help. The one thing I didn't like is that it doesn't tell you where to get the service at.
They have that data, but it is sold to employers. I asked for the data to make everything public and they told me it would be 10k for access to it.