Irrationality In Healthcare

The United States has always liked to pride itself on providing a high quality of life for its citizens, for taking care of us and giving us access to care and services that are scarce in many other countries. But for many Americans the road to accessing wholesome healthcare is full of road blocks, the most immediate of which is the cost. Bills from supposedly non-profit hospitals are sky-high, punishing those with low-coverage policies or the particularly unfortunate patients who are stuck in a financial bracket where they earn too much to qualify for government insurance programs but not enough to afford private insurance. Hospital administrators have excused high prices with the idea that finance is complex for patients, providers, and the …show more content…
At the root of the high prices is the chargemaster, the nonsensical list of prices for everything from gauze pads to surgeries. The first indicator of their irrationality is that their listed prices vary drastically between hospitals. If a product or service is truly being charged for what it is worth, there should be little variation between prices, especially when comparing hospitals in the same region which do not have to account for differing regional costs of living. What most chargemasters do have in common, however, are