Maverick's Update

We like money. We are totally supportive of anyone’s attempt to bring home as much bacon as possible — so long as they come by it honestly. This is easier said than done in health care because it is not a regular economy; getting health care is not like getting some product or service that you can live without. It makes perfect sense, then, when people start to talk about how much a health care procedure costs, people get really uncomfortable. Indeed, there is an increasing demand for good analysis of how much health care services cost, or should cost. That is why we noticed the new Johns Hopkins study that found that hospitals charge commercial health plans 2-3 times more than Medicare Advantage (MA) plans. The researchers used 2022 price information disclosed in machine-readable files, data required to be posted publicly by hospitals in the hospital price transparency rule. The researchers didn’t just find some hospitals overcharging some plans for some services – they compared commercial and MA prices from 2,434 hospitals and 118 insurers across 200,000 settings and services. When looking at these eye-popping price differences for different types of insurance plans that are pointed out in this study, we were reminded of a line in the Independence Day movie. When the President asked how the Department of Defense got funding to hide and study aliens at Area 51, the response was: “You don’t think they actually spend $30,000 on a toilet seat, do you?”