Bob
SoWal Insider
To Cut Healthcare Costs, Let's Start With the Secret Prices - US News and World Report To Cut Healthcare Costs, Let's Start With the Secret Prices
When a colonoscopy ranges from $450 to $10,000, there's room for plenty of savings
By Bernadine Healy, M.D.
Posted September 15, 2009
As President Obama said again in his recent address to Congress, an imperative for health reform is containing runaway health costs. But the elephant in the room that is a real driver of costs is something few people are talking about: the variable and hush-hush pricing of medical goods and services, set by the government or negotiated by insurers and largely kept secret from the patients ultimately responsible for their bills.
Look at a colonoscopy: When paid by Medicare, the fee is roughly $450. Insurance companies secretly negotiate a maze of different prices, generally two to five times that. But as the trade group America's Health Insurance Plans recently reported, patients who have to pay their own bill because they are uninsured, are seeking care outside of their insurer's network, or their insurer has denied their claim, can face retail charges as shameless as $10,000. And how can it be that Medicare pays $40,000, prix fixe, for the same heart operation
, by the same doctor, at the same hospital, that costs patients paying privately $80,000 to $120,000?
Consumers' ignorance of what services truly cost blurs the connection between their rising insurance premiums and prices, setting the stage for those prices to soar ever higher. Little wonder that the country's total health costs?for public programs like Medicare and Medicaid, private insurance, and out-of-pocket payments?are twice those of other developed countries. Making prices transparent so they can be compared and giving patients the means to shop for insurers that will get them the best deals would put downward pressure on prices and bring sustainable cost savings.
Instead, Americans are led to think that what's mainly to blame for out-of-control costs is their own voracious overconsumption. So cutting down on the quantity of medical services used by the sick and reallocating dollars for wellness and prevention sound like definite cost savers. But that ignores a few facts. Compared with people in other developed countries, Americans see doctors less often and take fewer medications
. They also spend the same or fewer number of days in hospitals, and they already lead the world in expenditures per capita on prevention and public health. Yes, more high-tech care may be given to the sick in this country, and yes, that contributes to higher costs. But whether it's low- or high-tech care, what is achingly obvious is that total costs are a function of prices. Ours are the highest.
When a colonoscopy ranges from $450 to $10,000, there's room for plenty of savings
By Bernadine Healy, M.D.
Posted September 15, 2009
As President Obama said again in his recent address to Congress, an imperative for health reform is containing runaway health costs. But the elephant in the room that is a real driver of costs is something few people are talking about: the variable and hush-hush pricing of medical goods and services, set by the government or negotiated by insurers and largely kept secret from the patients ultimately responsible for their bills.
Look at a colonoscopy: When paid by Medicare, the fee is roughly $450. Insurance companies secretly negotiate a maze of different prices, generally two to five times that. But as the trade group America's Health Insurance Plans recently reported, patients who have to pay their own bill because they are uninsured, are seeking care outside of their insurer's network, or their insurer has denied their claim, can face retail charges as shameless as $10,000. And how can it be that Medicare pays $40,000, prix fixe, for the same heart operation
, by the same doctor, at the same hospital, that costs patients paying privately $80,000 to $120,000?
Consumers' ignorance of what services truly cost blurs the connection between their rising insurance premiums and prices, setting the stage for those prices to soar ever higher. Little wonder that the country's total health costs?for public programs like Medicare and Medicaid, private insurance, and out-of-pocket payments?are twice those of other developed countries. Making prices transparent so they can be compared and giving patients the means to shop for insurers that will get them the best deals would put downward pressure on prices and bring sustainable cost savings.
Instead, Americans are led to think that what's mainly to blame for out-of-control costs is their own voracious overconsumption. So cutting down on the quantity of medical services used by the sick and reallocating dollars for wellness and prevention sound like definite cost savers. But that ignores a few facts. Compared with people in other developed countries, Americans see doctors less often and take fewer medications
. They also spend the same or fewer number of days in hospitals, and they already lead the world in expenditures per capita on prevention and public health. Yes, more high-tech care may be given to the sick in this country, and yes, that contributes to higher costs. But whether it's low- or high-tech care, what is achingly obvious is that total costs are a function of prices. Ours are the highest.