Hospitals lift curtain on prices, reveals giant swings for hips, knees and more

Only in US that we don’t know the price of the health service we are redeeming.

When I go get my car fix and I would go around to get an estimate for multiple body shop even if it is under insurance. But when it come to health care, you ask them for a cash price, they said they don’t know.

They will outright REFUSE to give you a quote...forget out-of-network, even IN network?!

This is so astonishing cause you would assume they have NEGOTIATED the rate given its in network so there is little variability in what can be charged by the doctor and what can be thrust upon the customer. ex. if you charge $100K more than other in-network doctors, good luck, cause the insurance company is only paying the doctor $5,000 no matter what and the customer will be on the hook for X% of that (outside of deductible and other math required to quote a price)...

Isn't one of the problems that the price of the total procedures are so different from the component parts / equipment / time, because different providers (and insurers) lump in different categories of cost with different methodologies of billing for overhead items? Or allow different costs to come in?

Such that even if you tried to comparison shop across 2 hospitals, you can't really tell whether that is the "all in" cost of what you want to understand?

Or is it that even for the same exact procedure, two patients might be billed differently because of what insurance each allows in particular? Or is it even further, price discrimination? Or because the hospital has agreements with the insurer for other costs to be billed for on the side, complicating the issue?

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In many countries, the concept of the hospital is also different from what it is in the US.

Where in the US there are clinics, ERs, urgent cares, and specialty practices, elsewhere there's just hospitals and you can go for any kind of treatment big or small.