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Transparent Hospital Pricing Exposes Wild Fluctuation, Even Within Miles

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The federal authorities’s new rule requiring hospitals to put up costs for his or her companies is meant to permit sufferers to buy round and evaluate costs, a step towards value transparency that has generated reward and skepticism.

Kaiser Health News examined the value lists — identified in hospital lingo as “chargemasters” — of the most important acute care hospitals in a number of giant cities.

Prices assorted broadly on some fundamental procedures, even for fundamental prices. For occasion, the record value on a liter of fundamental saline resolution for intravenous use ranged from $56 to $472.50, almost seven instances as a lot. A mind MRI with distinction was priced from $1,7210 to $Eight,800 on the hospitals. And they assorted broadly even when evaluating close by hospitals.

The new rule mandates that the chargemasters be out there on the hospital web site in a machine-readable format, however not all hospitals make them simple to search out, and understanding them is an even bigger impediment.

(Story continues under.)

KHN senior correspondent Julie Appleby and California Healthline’s Barbara Feder Ostrov lately wrote about this new rule and located tariffs befuddling to most anyone with out a sophisticated medical diploma.

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This KHN story first revealed on California Healthline, a service of the California Health Care Foundation.

Harriet Blair Rowan: hrowan@kff.org”>hrowan@kff.org, @HattieRowan

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