[prepend]

There are many industries that have this issue and deal with it in different ways.

I used to do consulting and fixed price estimates were common. Even when requirements were unclear. The way I mitigated this was with multiple clients.

Hospitals have lots of customers. They don’t have to perfectly estimate everything, they just have to be good on average.

Here’s a podcast from Econtalk with Dr Kieth Smith from Surgery Center of Oklahoma [0] where he explains how his hospital does it. Basically he estimate the cost for an average procedure and charge that, they are good at estimating and adjust each year. Sometimes extra stuff happens, sometimes less stuff happens. If the shit hits the fan during the procedure they have that rare event factored in.

It’s such an odd argument because they certainly could if they had to. But they don’t, so they don’t.

[0] http://www.econtalk.org/keith-smith-on-free-market-health-ca...

[maxerickson]

Right, they bill on what Medicare/insurers (apparently) want, and then are unable to quote cash because of that.

Not sure why describing what they do is being treated as a defense of it.