I Owe WHAT For That Appendectomy?
So how much should it cost to go to the hospital? We've all heard the horror stories. People without healthcare wind up being charged excessively more than those with insurance (because hospitals give big deductions to insurance companies because of volume). Even worse, sometimes one hospital can charge you $28,000 for what treatment at another would be less than half of that. According to Sarah Kliff and Dan Keating at The Washington Post, the federal government today will release the prices that hospitals charge for the 100 most common procedures. Hospitals in the past kept this secret, because of competition. Just as you'd expect, the numbers reveal a wide disparity in prices. The numbers reveal a tremendous, unexplained variation in cost of services, Kliff and Keating report. For example, in the District of Columbia, "George Washington University’s average bill for a patient on a ventilator was $115,000, while Providence Hospital’s average c...