[URSpider94]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you fall a couple of sigma away from the typical customer for medical tests.

I would argue that most people, when they are already ill, do not want to have to perform life-or-death cost/benefit tradeoff analyses on highly technical accuracy data from the service provider who will perform their blood tests. They want to be assured that everyone in the market meets a basic standard of competency. We as a society have made a decision that we will pay more for our blood tests so that we don't have to do that homework for ourselves.

I do definitely think there is an opportunity for individuals to be better informed about the cost and quality of their health care, as long as it meets a basic standard.

As an analogy, the airline industry is able to be cutthroat-competitive on fares and routing, while still being highly regulated when it comes to safety. You can't choose to take a cheaper flight by agreeing to let the airline skip on oil changes.

[maxerickson]

Yes, ill people are a relatively captive audience.

This is a reason to force price transparency, not hand wave it away. Especially when the institutions in question have been granted exclusive local licenses for some equipment.

It would give people a chance to price shop when care isn't urgent. Lots of people would drive a couple of hours to take advantage of the hundreds of dollars of differences in prices for things like CT scans. This would normalize prices for people seeking urgent care! Of course, that would undermine the entire way we fund care in the US, but whatever.

[URSpider94]

I am all for price transparency in medical care. What I'm arguing is that there should be standardization of the quality of service that is being offered, so that customers are not put in the position of deciding how much measurement error they can afford to pay for.