How to Look Up Prices at Your Hospital, If They Exist
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
- Doing this is unlikely to save you that much money if you are insured. Your insurer isn't going to say "hey you chose the cheaper hospital - here's a partial refund!" (But this policy _could_ enable interesting experiments like that! I would love to see them.) It could potentially reduce the amount you owe as coinsurance for a given procedure, depending on the details of your plan.
- If you are uninsured and potentially face the full cost of these services, I would pay close attention to this information where it is available.
- If you find a list by CPT code, you would need to figure out which CPT codes are going to apply for your visit, which is non-trivial for complicated (expensive) procedures. Generally more than one will be involved. Some hospitals list services by DRG, which may be a little easier to interpret (but comparisons across hospitals which list by DRG and those which list by CPT are going to be a big pain).
- MANY hospitals have not even bothered to post this information because the fines are trivial. They may be increased, which would be great.
With all that said, this is a very worthwhile initiative. There are potential downsides (including the potential for prices in some markets to increase), but this is the right idea and a good start.
IIRC, $100/day. I can only imagine it was a higher amount in a draft, and that someone changed it to keep the hospitals happy.
In the country where I live it's a different healthcare regime and we get estimations on costs tied to the average cost for the prognosis when admitted.
However, I googled the codes that seemed plausible for a root canal I was going to have and when I provided that to the insurance company, the rep did give me their reimbursement which wasn't that far off.
I had a very vague idea of keywords due to briefly working for a health insurer years ago so I was able to do it spontaneously during the call.
But the completely unhelpful attitude indicated to me that essentially no customers do this.
>MANY hospitals have not even bothered to post this information because the fines are trivial
The major hospital nearest me has not even bothered to abide by human trafficking laws (vis a vis contracts with Filipino nurses) for probably the same reason.