Giving birth costs a lot. Hospitals won't tell you how much.
Vox1 HN recommenders · 2017–2022
3.4M views · explainer · dated · Uploaded 2016-05-05
A Vox reporter tries to learn what his son's birth would cost before it happens and fails, showing how opaque US hospital pricing is even for the most common procedure.
HN cites it as the go-to example of how impossible it is to get prices in advance for US medical care.
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7 comments from Hacker News
You seem to be literally the only person who has been able to get straight answers from anyone on anything related to health care. As you can probably see from this thread, most of us would have the same reaction: impotent frustration. I can go to another dealer if I don't get straight answers. I can walk away at any point up until the final signature. This is simply not an analogous situation, as evidenced by the repeated testimony of everyone here. And this guy: [VIDEO]
Here's a great video that I think is related to this topic about the near-impossibility of finding out the cost of giving birth: [VIDEO] I'd imagine the reasons for the complexity are the same as an injury. Edit: Just a thought... What if enough consumers went line-by-line AFTER the fact and shared what the specific breakdown of every item cost? So then you'd be able to say, okay, at this hospital them giving us an Advil cost $X and them doing this procedure cost $Y. Some way of making the master price list for how much individual items cost public and grouping together ones that generally appear together...
Relevant: [VIDEO] The "existing legislation and regulation" section is pretty interesting for wikipedia: [LINK]
I find it surprising that the US is seen as strongly free market when things like this crop up all over the place. Here's a video of someone failing to get pricing in advance for a medical procedure and an article about how many simple tasks need licences. The fact that a lot of areas only have 1 broadband provider blows my mind. [VIDEO] [LINK] [LINK]
Hospitals won’t tell you the costs of treatment ahead of time, even for easily predictable items like baby delivery. It’s impossible to shop around. [VIDEO]
Reminds me of the Vox reporter who tried to get a hospital quote for how much it would cost his wife to have a baby: [VIDEO] I’m sure you can guess the outcome.
You can try to comparison shop all you want, but no hospital will give you details in the chargemaster if they aren't legally obligated to. Even if you are in a position to shop around, journalists have documented their futile attempts to do price estimation for routine procedures. Here's one example: [VIDEO] There have been recent laws that requiring publishing some of that information (which are being heavily contested), but comparison shopping remains effectively impossible in the US.