Have you ever tried to find out how much a medical procedure was going to cost before your appointment? If you have; then you know it’s darn near impossible. Price transparency has improved in recent years but the struggle to find clear health costs is still so very real. Even trying to find costs can make you feel like this:
Let’s take a look at what makes this process so complicated and challenging.
1. Hospitals don’t want to give you the prices of their procedures if they know they are too expensive.
2. The prices for a procedure or an appointment can vary up to 75% from one location to another, even if they seem like comparable providers. So, you end up going in blind, not knowing how much you could have saved.
3. Insurance companies don’t always know what your costs will come out to be because they have different negotiated rates with different providers. Since there’s a lot that goes into finally sniffing out what the patient’s cost responsibility will be in the end, insurance companies often don’t bother.
4. For procedures like MRIs; your prescription might require contrast, which some providers charge extra for after your appointment. This can leave you looking at your final bill like…
5. The whole I’m-probably-never-going-to-hit-that-high-deductible-so-why-not-just-pay-for-it-out-of-pocket- debate you’re having with yourself can be exhausting.
6. Your appointment often won’t cover just ONE thing either, when it comes to health care you’re going to likely be paying one bundled payment encompassing all the services you received from that provider.
(Get it, bundled? Okay, this one was a stretch.)
7. A lot of resources only give patients price estimates rather than real prices, so patients have to search high and low to find true health care prices online. (We’ve got you covered.)
8. It can be nearly impossible to get ahold of the right person to even talk to about your procedure’s price.
9. You can’t make a decision about health care based solely on price because quality plays a huge role in the decision-making process, so providers are afraid you won’t be comparing apples to apples.
10. Doctors are naturally afraid to step out of the box and they don’t see their peers all adopting price transparency yet, so they just keep following that pack.
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All this has started to change though and price transparency has gone from being a far-off dream to a reality across the country. Take it from Motivational Speaker Cat, together we can make it easier to find health care costs.
