Brian Klepper
Posted 8/19/12 on Medscape Connect’s Care and Cost Blog
My recent 3-hour outpatient prostate biopsy generated nearly $25,000 in charges. My health plan will probably settle for four to five thousand dollars – this is the real market value – but if we were uninsured we’d be on the hook for the whole thing. All in all, a minor diagnostic procedure – nothing cured or treated – for the cost of a pretty nice car.
The capricious insanity of health care pricing is delivered with straight faces by health care professionals and executives to flabbergasted patients and benefits managers. It is the by-product of a system utterly devoid for decades of transparency, accountability or market pressures.