Getting your appendix out can cost between $2,000 and $180,000. Hip replacements run from $10,000 to more than $100,000. Hospitals, we have also learned, frequently mark up the price of cotton swabs and routine X-rays by 300 or 400 percent, with most patients oblivious to the reason their health care bills are so large.
As a response to the hidden variability in health care prices, an increasing number of states have passed price transparency legislation. Federal legislators have even introduced several bills into Congress to make health care prices more transparent. Expect more such bills to follow.
But will health care price transparency help reduce costs? Seems it would. But health-care can be a strange and unique sect of economics. Could price transparency backfire and cause spending to increase?
(Read more and view comments at The Atlantic)
