No. of Recommendations: 2
There's vastly more than a 40-50% price differential in the cost of getting a dinner at an Italian restaurant in my metro area as well.
Uh, huh. For the same 12oz Diet Coke? Hardly.
Or perhaps it's because the characteristics of an Italian dinner vary wildly across different restaurants.
You're trying hard here to conflate all procedures in an analogy that compares the Michelin 5-star Italian restaurant with the $200 bottle of Pinot Gris with Luigi's pizza place, his checkered tablecloths and $5 dollar slices. And many procedures are like that.
But if I'm merely looking for something to drink I'm going to go for the $200 Pinot Gris I'm going to have a soda. Similarly if I have a sniffle or a turned ankle I'm not going to fly to the Mayo Clinic. It's not necessary.
Consumers’ lack of clarity on health care prices has long been recognized as a problem in U.S. health care because they have been vulnerable to price-setting behavior characteristic of monopolies, not free markets. In addition, high prices in U.S. health care have been recognized as a key driver of U.S. health care spending, and current research suggests that hospital prices are growing at a faster rate than physician prices. The modern era has seen a growing interest in empowering U.S. health care consumers to play a greater role in their health care spending. Price transparency is an important component of that shift, and recent federal and state policy changes are designed to bring more price transparency to U.S. health care, with the belief that it can ultimately lower prices and spending. As the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) writes, “If more consumers started using price information to choose lower-priced providers, then, over time, those changes in price sensitivity might pressure providers to accept negotiated prices that were much lower than they would be under current law.” 63
