Transparency in Healthy Care Costs: Information in Markets

I personally found this to be a pretty interesting article. Why?  The healthcare industry itself can best be described as a confusing, compilation of esoteric pricing and market structures; and while this may serve as  great fire and hot-air for political debates and politicians arguing for "change" , in reality, the most important factor that gets set aside, is that we, the consumers, end up having to navigate through a confusing and cloudy market that we know little about, besides the fact that we need it.  Great, right? Not at all.

You know, I've probably personally had over 15 procedures in my life time. A few were fairly intrusive , requiring a few months of recovery, while others, such as getting tubes replaced in my ears or having endoscopy examinations, we're relatively quick and painless.  Now, I have no idea what these costs were, I was just a kid, and my parents took care of everything.  Still, after reading this article, I can only imagine what type of costs were incurred.

To me, a strong and healthy market depends on a few things.  The first of them is honesty, and by this I mean a strong and true intent at delivering and offering value-based goods or services to consumers with the emphasis on the value created for consumers.   The second is information.  As consumers, specifically in today's fast growing and information abundant world, we have the ability to make the best purchases thanks to the educated decisions empowered by having mass amounts of knowledge at our fingertips.

Now, healthcare is completely different from paper towels, tooth paste, produce, electronics, and so on, but at its core, it's still about delivering a service to a consumer.  As a consumer, we have a need, and we want that need to be satiated in the most efficient manner while simultaneously being affordable within our budget constraints.

This article highlights the fact that healthcare and its current structure might very well not be offering the most efficient or affordable services.  With such a large gap in prices between these hospitals and surgery centers, and the fact that the main differing factor is the acceptance and lack of acceptance of medicare and medicaid, it at least should encourage us to examine and question our system a bit more.

Transparency, honesty, fairness, and efficiency; these are values that should permeate all corners of a market.  Now let's ask this question, do they?