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It’s nearly unbelievable to average consumers, but well known to wonks: health care prices are impossible to come by. Even calling and asking about a specific procedure, as researchers recently reported, led to an “I dunno” from the hospital itself more than half the time.
But now, a little bit of light is being shed on this dark area of health care. Wednesday morning, the federal government released a massive amount of data: the prices that hospitals across the country charge for 100 of the most common inpatient treatments.
Skipping over the wonk for now, let’s dive in to some numbers right here in the Bay Area. They cast a spotlight on how random and wildly variable health care prices are.
I picked one procedure, a hip or knee replacement (“lower extremity major joint replacement”) without major complications.
A joint replacement is generally a procedure you would schedule in advance, not a race-to-the-hospital-life-or-death-spare-no-cost situation. You might think the range of prices would be somewhat narrow.
You would be wrong. Continue reading
