By Arielle Kane
Back in July, federal regulators began requiring that health insurers disclose their prices for the services they cover both in- and out-of-network.
The idea is to help health care consumers better understand what their co-pays and liabilities may be depending on where they go for care.
The rule reveals, but doesn’t solve, a fundamental flaw of the U.S. health care system: widespread price variation.
As an experiment, I used a price estimate tool for OhioHealth, a large health system in Ohio. I typed in “Arthroplasty Hip/Knee Total,” a full knee replacement surgery, and searched the price as an uninsured patient. And within the same health care system, the price varied from $57,297 at Riverside Methodist Hospital to $67,842 at Grant Medical Center.
Read more in The Columbus Dispatch.
