[rqtwteye]

"What hospitals charge is not necessarily cost to patient is all I'm saying."

It is cost to the patient in the form of ever rising insurance premiums and deductibles (mine is $3000 and a lot of people have even higher deductibles).

Your counselor example also shows the insanity of US healthcare pricing. $400 vs $80 vs $96. How is anybody supposed to make economical decisions with such crazy pricing differences? There should be a regulation that providers charge the same price for the same procedure, no matter if they are insured or not or what insurance they have.

[lannisterstark]

I mean, to an extent I agree. I just think that the current pricing structure is lack of competition and a result of overregulation (I may be wrong?) in how hard it is to get into healthcare market. If you make it insanely hard only certain companies will be able to get in and they can then charge whatever they want.

[nradov]

Which specific regulations could we remove to cut prices without seriously impacting care quality?

Generally the level of regulatory compliance necessary to enter the healthcare market is proportional to the risk of patient harm. If you want to sell healthcare analytics software not directly involved in patient care then there are basically no more regulations on vendors than in any other software market. On the other hand, if you want to start a new company to make implanted pacemakers then you'll have to spend years working through FDA compliance issues because a single tiny error can easily kill a patient.