Hospital Price Gouging Revealed

In our continuing struggle to bring transparency to medical care pricing, we have yet another hospital claim that was incurred in August that reveals the level of price gouging we find in almost all hospital claims. Total billed charges were approximately $109,000. The hospital graciously offered to discount this by 7%, and would settle for $101,000 if we agreed to pay quickly. We repriced this claim under Medicare 2008 RVRBS and found that Medicare would have paid about $18,000 on this claim.  The billed charges are 575% of Medicare. 

We hope our client is not going to “play ball” with this hospital, as the bill is not fair and reasonable in our opinion.

As reported to CMS, this hospital’s cost for this admission was $27,862. Therefore, the hospital will make a profit of about $73,000 for this 2 week hospital admission.   

Since the employer is a political subdivision, and ultimately the taxpayers will foot this bill, we believe that if the hospital does not come to a reasonable and fair price, the taxpayers should be informed.