Those billing codes are CRAZY complex tho. One example: when you see a doctor you may generate multiple billing events. For instance they may draw blood, take a

Those billing codes are CRAZY complex tho. One example: when you see a doctor you may generate multiple billing events. For instance they may draw blood, take an X-Ray, and perform a specific type of test. In a sane world you would generate three billing codes, sum them, and you'd have your price. But that's not how it really works. Instead certain billing codes can be combined to form new billing codes which makes things stupid crazy hard to reason about. Those rolled up billing codes can then even roll up to different billing codes when combined with other procedures or other grouped billing codes. When billing is this complex the treatments do begin to look relatively bespoke. Basically we're inefficient from basically every direction in the USA. Because every player in the system negotiates with basically everyone else individually you end up with a nightmare of complexity and all of the associated insanity. Hospitals love it because it means that they can take advantage of the complexity to bill for all sorts of things that they otherwise couldn't simply because no one can audit this stuff effectively.