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Comment by shaki-dora | Hacker News Reader

People are mocking this policy here, but it’s obviously better than nothing.

A large number of hospital procedures are likely planned, and can therefore be subject to comparison shopping. Giving birth is an obvious one. But even for many fractures there is a day or two before the procedure, and you could transfer.

Maybe more importantly, public price information allows independent research into price disparities, and public shaming of the worst offenders. That’s data only insurance companies currently have access to.

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I don't really think it is "better than nothing", though.

If we start 'publicly shaming' hospitals for high prices, then that will encourage hospitals to aim for low prices. That of course sounds great on its face, but my concern is that this is going to encourage hospitals to achieve lower prices through cost cutting, (aka cutting corners, in the industry where corners need to be cut the least: healthcare).

Trying to rein in healthcare costs is great, but I fear that trying to do it by encouraging focus on narrow metrics like these could do more harm than good.

Also, these publicly-available prices will be almost meaningless to the average person, as they are just 'list prices' and won't match what insurance or any individual actually pays.

Price and quality are not strongly correlated because the variance is just enormous:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/01/21/a-kne...

> The report, which analyzed three years of BCBSA companies' claims data in 64 markets, found that the average price for a knee replacement surgery is $31,124. But that price, which doesn't reflect what the patient actually pays, can vary greatly within the same city. In Dallas, for example, a knee surgery will run anywhere between $16,772 and $61,585 depending on the hospital.

"cutting corners" is part of the overall profitability picture for a health organization (or any large corporation) so literally _anywhere_ that corners could be cut is already happening.

Isn't pressuring them to lower prices (at least a bit) what the insurance companies do themselves?

Not really. It is much more common and much easier from a business operations perspective to simply increase premiums or deny coverage, especially because a lack of competition means that consumers will have to pay the premiums no matter what. If a price hike causes the premiums to become unaffordable the insurance company actually benefits because they no longer have to endure the cost of providing benefits but they get to keep all the money that was paid before raising the rate to a level that the consumer could no longer afford. This is in contrast to healthcare providers which have a much better negotiating position because they're the ones actually providing the service that the consumer actually wants for the money that they're paying, so trying to get them to lower prices ends up being a much more difficult and risky negotiation.

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