> Patients that end up costing 10x what was expected due to complications. For her this is a minuscule risk, but in her negotiations it has been their main worry.
And that's probably one of the biggest reason hospitals don't want to talk about actual costs. If you tell someone it's going to cost $X for removing their appendix, but they have a heart attack on the table it's not going to cost $X any more.
Doesn't make lack of transparency right, but in this scenario, I can sort of see why.
But a hospital doesn't do 1 surgery, they do thousands. So that one 10x doesn't really change the average cost very much. This is just an excuse by the hospital.
That doesn't make much sense. You can have a price for whatever complication occurred. Does the insurance/billing code system not already have a method for listing emergency/ad-hoc complications & procedures? It must have that otherwise there would be no way to bill in those cases currently.
e.g an emergency during surgery would normal get XXXX billing code so just publish what you charge for that XXXX billing code.
And that's probably one of the biggest reason hospitals don't want to talk about actual costs. If you tell someone it's going to cost $X for removing their appendix, but they have a heart attack on the table it's not going to cost $X any more.
Doesn't make lack of transparency right, but in this scenario, I can sort of see why.