OPINION: The health care system does not work for patients. If health care companies had to disclose prices for services, there would be a radically transparent and different system.
A few weeks ago, Perla Ni went to the Stanford Health Care hospital system for a breast biopsy. Days later she was given the procedure’s price: $143,396.66. I know everything costs more in California, but this was ridiculous. I’ve performed hundreds of those operations. They take about 45 minutes.
Price gouging like this is costing Americans billions of dollars and eroding public trust in American hospitals. Sixty-four percent of Americans say they have avoided or delayed medical care for fear of the bill. Every stakeholder in health care is doing very well financially except for one — the patient. The health-care establishment should remember that half of Americans have less than $400 in savings. Every stakeholder in health care is doing very well financially except for one — the patient. Many Americans are still living paycheck to paycheck. For them, life can be a struggle.
Employers, such as Boeing Co. BA, -0.47%, Microsoft Corp. MSFT, +1.01% and Tesla Inc. TSLA, +7.30%, are leading the way demanding fair prices. Acting as a proxy shopper for their employees, whose health costs they cover, employers and their health plans are creating preferred networks and eliminating copays and deductibles for people who go to high-quality “centers of excellence” that have fair prices.
Billing quality is medical quality. And financial toxicity is medical harm. In the same way that hospital complication rates are currently being tracked for public reporting and quality improvement purposes, Dr. Simon Matthews and I have recently published new metrics of billing quality in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
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