Will Obamacare Reduce the Crazy Variation in Hospital Prices?

If you have been paying attention to US healthcare policy debates lately, you know that hospitals have a price problem. Walk across the street from one hospital to a competitor hospital, and you could easily find yourself facing a $30,000 increase in your medical bills. At one extreme for instance recent information shows that replacing your hip with a surgical implant might cost anywhere from $5000 to more than $200,000, depending upon which hospital you go to for your procedure.
The good news is this: Obamacare will largely eliminate these price variations, by increasing the proportion of Americans with health insurance, thereby leading our insurance providers to negotiate more reasonable prices from hospitals.
Not sure that anything good can come out of Obamacare? Let’s look a bit more closely at the recent hoo-hah about hospital pricing… (Read more and view comments at Forbes)
 

PeterUbel