Two halves of California have wide gap in health costs

[proverbialwisdom]

Source: Sacramento Bee

BY CLAUDIA BUCK

September 27, 2015

When it comes to health care costs, it’s clear: Where you live matters. And in California, the gap is especially sharp between the north and south.

Take, for instance, common procedures like a cesarean section or a total knee replacement. The total average price tag for a typical C-section in the four-county Sacramento area is $28,828; in east Los Angeles County, it’s $17,567, according to a health care comparison tool unveiled last week by state officials and Consumer Reports magazine.

And that knee replacement? It’s about $42,488 in the Sacramento Valley but drops to $27,276 in east Los Angeles County.

“Northern California shoppers are in for some unhappiness and some surprise,” said Dr. R. Adams Dudley, director of the UC San Francisco Center for Healthcare Value and a professor of medicine and health policy. “They live in an expensive part of the state, health-care-wise.”

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/health-and-medicine/article36777321.html

[FreakinDJ]

1. Thanks Sutter Health Care for driving up costs

But Geez the non-stop commercials make it all better

[Recursion]

2. A friend said our health care problem is primarily one of price discovery

I think there's something to that

[Sunlei]

3. yes, all the 'prices' need to be public. people need to post their bills in public.

we need to see bills/charges from other first world countries too.

Anything OUR state or federal taxes pay to the insurance corps/state healthcare, we need to see in public exactly what the State or insurance companies charged for the healthcare &/or medicine.

[merrily]

4. Disclosure is not the solution to every part of "our health care problem." Or almost any problem.

In the field of health care in particular, the inadequacies of disclosure have been written about extensively. Among many other things, when your loved one is showing signs of heart attack or stroke, you are not going to commence a price comparison. You are going to call an ambulance, which will take your loved one to the nearest emergency room accepting patients at that moment.

Disclosure requirements are probably the easiest form of regulation to legislate, though. So everyone acts as though disclosure is some kind of cure all. And, sure, sunlight is better than secrecy. However, this is not going to solve "our health care problem," which is a cost and outcomes problem.

We are number 1 in high cost with relatively crappy outcomes, with people covered by health insurance still going into bankruptcy over health care costs.

[Recursion]

5. No, nor was that the claim

There are people who cannot afford the marginal costs of healthcare delivery, but there aren't really that many of them. Price discovery is usually the central problem, though, when there is this big of a gap between marginal cost and price.

[merrily]

6. It's so much more complex than that.

[coyote]

7. And here in Germany...

a caesarean section costs 3500€...about 80% cheaper than the cheapest price in California. No wonder health care is so fucked up in America.

Reference: http://www.t-online.de/eltern/schwangerschaft/id_19351840/kaiserschnitt-ein-schnitt-fuers-leben.html