I’ve always said that the first line of defense in actually curtailing hospital costs is forcing hospitals to not only publish their price lists, but actually give them to patients and their families while in the hospital.
The excuses given usually are ‘why do you want to traumatize the family at such a time?’ My response is, ‘why do you want to traumatize the family by charging $120 for a bottle of Tylenol which you administer exactly one pill from?’
Alas, initially, it will harm the health of the average citizen as they suffer from heart attacks seeing exactly how much they’re paying.
That $120 pays for your pill and also the pill of about 10 illegals or uninsured whos showed up at the ER and who will never pay a dime.
People in need of surgery or treatment will shop around for the most economical provider (physician/hospital) for that particular need. Someone will need to develop a universal method/network of maintaining medical records. Enter the government (again), and the “cost” (tax) to support this “service”.
It's available to anyone who cares to download it: Link. And I believe the hospitals were livid when CMS made it available.
I questioned the bookkeeping office over a hospital bill that was twice what I was quoted. Turns out a previous patient had skipped the country so their bill was shuffled down to me. Adding insult to injury, the proceedure didn’t work.