[Flash Walken]

Locke, you were asking about 'cost' for care...

Women giving birth in the United States without experiencing any medical complications can be charged anywhere between $3,296 and $37,227, according to a new study conducted by researchers at the University of California at San Francisco. And the dramatically different pricing at different hospitals doesn’t lend itself to any kind of logic.

Researchers studied about 100,000 births in California, and found that women having babies just a few miles apart could be charged prices that varied by more than $15,000. Institutional and market factors — like the hospital’s non-profit or for-profit status, whether the hospital incurs a lot of uncompensated costs by serving a large population of low-income patients, and the mother’s age and length of stay — only explained about a third of the price fluctuations, according to researchers.

“The majority of the discrepancies couldn’t be explained and there was no consistent pattern,” Dr. Y. Hsia, an associate professor of emergency medicine and the lead author of the study, told ABC News.

That may seem like it would spur expectant parents to shop around a little bit and select a cheaper hospital, but Hsia noted that comparison shopping is virtually impossible. Doctors and other hospital staff typically have no idea what health services, including the care related to childbirth, will end up costing. Patients can’t know for sure what they’ll be expected to pay until they receive their bill.

Other data in this area has drawn similar conclusions. As a whole, Americans medical bills are random, and a lack of price transparency in the industry prevents people from realizing when they’re patronizing one of the most expensive hospitals in the country. A recent analysis in the New York Times found that giving birth in America costs more than anywhere else in the world, although that doesn’t translate to better quality of care. In fact, U.S. hospital prices are simply artificially high, sometimes charging patients up to ten times more than the actual price of the services they’re receiving.

http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014...h-cost-varies/

This reflects the other article I posted where a swab of disinfectant for the umbilical cord was 20 dollars whereas the entire bottle has a retail price of $2.49.