This is the tip of a really trashy iceberg when it comes to general healthcare costs. Not only is consistent prices by patient a problem, but prices by procedu

This is the tip of a really trashy iceberg when it comes to general healthcare costs. Not only is consistent prices by patient a problem, but prices by procedure and by hospital has a huge range as well, as documented many times. An operation can cost $10K at one place and $100K at another. This isn't news though. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/08/hospital-prices-cost-differences_n_3232678.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/08/hospital-prices-cos... What isn't talked about is this: when you want to get a procedure done, and your insurance will cover it the same at each place, how do you choose your hospital? Location is usually a big factor. You'd also probably want to go to the place with the best facilities. What ends up happening is that hospitals will build these expensive facilities in good locations to attract, for lack of a better term in this story, customers. Billion dollar construction projects. Do you think their prices went up or down during this build? That all is raw cost. Now throw in what you pay. If your insurance covers the 95K of the 100K, but won't cover any of the 10K, you're going to choose the 100K procedure. The health care insurer eats that 95K and then raises their prices across the board. Everyone nationally loses, except for that hospital, which is now closer to paying off its new facility. This situation in reality is much murkier, and I skated over plenty of details I'm sure, some I didn't even realize I skated over. Now, state of the art medical facilities are a good thing on their own, but there's a game being played here with the prices of the facilities themselves and how they are paid for. With the lack of transparency, we aren't really able to determine much. All of these dynamics come from the complexities of a system that badly needs to be simplified, regardless of if you think it should be done by the government or privately. You can probably already see here how a single payer system or some sort of direct proportionality costs could make a big difference. I can't say I have the solution, but I think this part of the narrative is often missing.