Earlier quoted context omitted.
Price discovery doesn't help you. If you get knocked out, heart attack, your arm cut off, whatever (i.e. a lot of the expensive stuff) you just go to the nearest hospital, no consumer market finagling is even possible other than trying to live near a good hospital. Other times with chronic conditions where theoretically price discovery could help, the problem is that you need care badly so all the chronic care provid…
The sad thing is, as expensive as healthcare is they probably have to jack up those rates because they are getting screwed everywhere else. In the end, though, the consumer is always the one who ends up getting the ultimate screw... exactly why healthcare shouldn't be seen as a service to consume.
Had to get an MRI and the lab corporation that performed the MRIs said that it would be ~$850 if billed through insurance. This included the total cost minus what was covered by insurance so the initial cost of the procedure was in the ~$1200 range. BUT, then they said if we just paid them directly and they didn't have to bill through insurance it would only be $650. So our insurance didn't even cover the absolutely ridiculous amount of overhead that was added just to deal with our insurance provider.