[pdx]

    They have avoided government regulation and control in 
    that area by choosing not to accept Medicaid or Medicare 
    payments.

I don't understand how the government itself is causing lack of price transparency, but this should be addressed by any president or congressman who imagines he's going to do something about healthcare costs. If you don't have price transparency, you have no chance at cost cutting.

[showerst]

Medicare/caid prices are standardized and public. They also release data on what specific hospitals bill for the most common procedures.

http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Stat...

Dealing with Medicare/caid involves lots of additional overhead and billing oversight, but that graf is a political shot, not a fact related to transparent pricing.

[fnordfnordfnord]

Isn't this a recent development, like two months ago?

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/08/business/hospital-billing-...

[showerst]

The specific provider data is recent, but the 'here's what we'll reimburse for what procedures' data has always been public, as far as I know.

I think this is a link to it, but I'm not 100% sure - http://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Medicare-Fee-for-Service-Payment...

[showerst]

Medicare and Medicaid pay less than the private insurers (usually), and far less than the (wholly insane) charges to the uninsured. Generally the government pays a standardized cost plus some set profit margin, which is usually less profitable per procudure

It's very easy to do the accounting to make the government look very efficient and reasonable, or look like it requires a bankruptcy-inducing level of loss, depending on your politics and the field of medicine.

What I _think_ this statement is really inferring is that they refuse to take medicare/aid and pay the government's lower rates, and thus raised their margins and bottom line, allowing for better care.

This is a pretty standard conservative view of health care provisioning, and I'm surprised that it was allowed into a news story. The whole piece here reeks of being a politically slanted press release, which is embarrassing since it's actually an interesting story, and an editor could've just changed a few sentences to keep a more neutral POV.

[eloisius]

Prices get equalized at Medica{re,id} prices for the procedure. Those get set by a large conference of physicians and bureaucrats. In most other markets, we'd call it price fixing.