Oklahoma City Hospital posts prices, creates bidding war

http://kfor.com/2013/07/08/okc-hospital-posting-surgery-prices-online/

OKLAHOMA CITY – An Oklahoma City surgery center is offering a new kind of price transparency, posting guaranteed all-inclusive surgery prices online. The move is revolutionizing medical billing in Oklahoma and around the world.

Dr. Keith Smith and Dr. Steven Lantier launched Surgery Center of Oklahoma 15 years ago, founded on the simple principle of price honesty.

“What we’ve discovered is health care really doesn’t cost that much,” Dr. Smith said. “What people are being charged for is another matter altogether.”

Surgery Center of Oklahoma started posting their prices online about four years ago.

Click here to see the online prices at Surgery Center of Oklahoma.

The prices are all-inclusive quotes and they are guaranteed.

“When we first started we thought we were about half the price of the hospitals,” Dr. Lantier remembers. “Then we found out we’re less than half price. Then we find out we’re a sixth to an eighth of what their prices are. I can’t believe the average person can afford health care at these prices.”

Their goal was to start a price war and they did.

Their first out-of-town patients came from Canada; soon everyday Americans caught on.

Matthew Gang, 22, tore his patella tendon, dislocating his knee-cap playing basketball earlier this year.

Gang is from California and he is uninsured.

Surgery in his home-state was going to be about $30,000.

The posted price at Surgery Center of Oklahoma was $5,700, one-fifth the price.

Matthew and his father Tom Gang flew from California to Oklahoma for surgery.

“It was well worth it,” Tom Gang said. “I need a rotator cuff surgery right now. I’m thinking about flying out there and having my surgery because it was such a positive experience for us.”

A handful of other Oklahoma medical facilities have started joining Surgery Center of Oklahoma in price transparency:

McBride Orthopedic Hospital
Oklahoma Heart Hospital
Cancer Specialists of Oklahoma
Breast Imaging of Oklahoma
Comprehensive Diagnostic Imaging

Surgery Center of Oklahoma does accept private insurance, but the center does not accept Medicaid or Medicare.

Dr. Smith said federal Medicare regulation would not allow for their online price menu.

They have avoided government regulation and control in that area by choosing not to accept Medicaid or Medicare payments.

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So we have the free market in action and what happened? Prices came down. Now, I would like to hear the progressive perspective on why this is a bad thing or why Obamacare is the best solution for poor people. Competition brought medical prices down to 1/5 of what they were.

Anyone also want to take a guess of what these prices will be like under Obamacare?

 

Good, let people bring prices down on their own. It's a stupid regulation, not being able to put prices online. It's common sense things that really matter, and need to be passed.

 

Oh dear. the free market at work. Progressives will sue.

 

I saw this guy on Stossel and have linked to their price list here.

It's a great concept, and proof Obama and the other Republicrats are once again taking us in precisely the wrong direction.

 

I remember reading something about this on Reason.com awhile ago. If I remember right the surgery center was started by the doctor and a few others. Good thing Obamacare prohibits Drs. from starting their own hospitals or healthcare centers from now on.

http://http://www.forbes.com/sites/sciencebiz/2010/04/05/obamacares-first-victim-physician-owned-specialty-hospitals/

Preventing more places like this to open up can only help healthcare.... right?

 

I'm not convinced it's that straight forwards. If there was any kind of easy answer to funding healthcare, we'd all be using it already.

This does look good on face value (though the article is little short of marketing for the hospital) but there are plenty of exceptions and conditions. Those prices only apply for up-front payment, not filing though insurance and they don't take Medicare or Medicaid at all. The also only cover the core treatment, not overnight stays, tests and the like. You'd need to make sure the price comparisons are like-with-like.

The major problem with competitive private healthcare is that they tend not to touch any of the complicated or expensive treatment at all - why would they take the risk? Anyone unfortunate enough to suffer anything difficult will have to pay through the nose if they can get treatment at all.

It's already clear that these high-profile marketing prices don't apply to payment by insurance so I'm sure this hospital would screw the state system out of as much money as it could assuming it accepted it at all. This has nothing to do with helping poor people, it's about getting the business of the rich.

This isn't to say that there aren't loads of problems with other forms of healthcare too, only that this doesn't represent any kind of magical solution to all our problems. That'd be like saying Supermarket 2-for-1 offers will solve world-hunger.

 

Why do you say that? Washington is run by special interest so they will not accept good ideas, just ideas that benefit lobbyists.

They would make more money if they accepted insurance but they don't.

 

It's good to see at least one company bucking the trend and introducing some competition, but I would hazard to say that the medical industry doesn't want competition and will do everything in their power to shut this hospital down. The big medical corporations are perfectly happy with their current de facto cartel and their above market economic profit. They'll fight tooth and nail against the introduction of competition.

 

I was thinking wider than just the USA. Managing healthcare is a world-wide issue.

They do accept insurance. It's just that their advertised prices don't apply to insurance claims, and I'm sure they don't charge insurance companies less (in fact, I believe those prices are fixed by contract between hospitals and insurance companies).

This is a private business. What makes you think they wouldn't do everything they can to increase their profits (hopefully within reason)?

 

I am. I recently had work done on my prostate, a day procedure. The bill came out to over $12,000. At Oklahoma Surgery Center, it would have been less than $3,000. Perhaps it being that straight forward is precisely the point.

Imagine if everyone could simply go get operations where they wanted, and surgery centers and other health care professionals had to post their prices to earn peoples' business instead of the system now where no one cares what things cost because we have insurance.

 

Oh and ZM, I forgot something the Surgery Center guy said. He gets 5 to 7 emails a week from people who were about to come out to Oklahoma and have their operations done, but stayed at the original hospital at the last minute when the original hospital agreed to do if for the Oklahoma Surgery Center price.

I'm not sure this is the same segment I watched on Fox several months ago, but here's Stossel interviewing the guy on FBN. Good stuff here:

[video=youtube;hb_woGzJXTY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hb_woGzJXTY[/video]

 

You are right its a private business, therefore its direction and motive is susceptible to the whims of its owners. Perhaps their goal is to help people while still making money, not necessarily increasing profits or making obscene amounts of money. There are plenty of non-profits and businesses out there that exist for reasons other than just more and more money. People are not all uniform and neither is what drives them. Hence why one size fits all government directions usually alienate or force some people to do things they wouldn't normally. This type of stuff distorts economies.

Besides, there are other ways to increase profits without increasing prices, operating more efficiently is one of them; and avoiding medicare and medicaid regulations, and insurance allows them to offer prices far below, well under half the cost of competitors. It just goes to show you where greatest increase to our healthcare in the US is coming from... government and insurance companies... the middle men who provide essentially nothing to the process. Good thing the middle men have all the power in this situation as well, otherwise they would have been cut out long ago... instead people are pushing government the largest reason for our high healthcosts more and more into controlling healthcare... its having the adverse effect desired.

 

Definitely the word right there!!!!!!!!!

 

I would argue the same is already happening to us with government. The difference is, we are a captive audience to government, and can choose where to get our medical care. Well, we can for now somewhat. If Barack Obama has his way, he will be dictating how and where we get our medical care.

 

I don't necessarily disagree. I'm not claiming any current system is any better, only that this doesn't represent the magical solution to all our healthcare problems that you imagine it to be. There would be improvements from the kind of system you're suggesting but there'd be just as many disadvantages too - I already pointed a couple out.

Again, if this were such a flawless solution, we'd all have been doing it decades ago.

 

Healthcare and insurance are some of the most heavily regulated industries in the US, these regulations force businesses to operate in certain ways. This is because certain special interest groups make ridiculous money through our current broken system, they use that money to influence policy makers to do things that encourage the system to continue. Thus the problem is government control and manipulation of the market. Competition forces innovation and gives downward pressure on prices, always has, always will.

Just look at my earlier post #5 and read the article about special interest groups and how they backed Obamacare and got benefits from it.

 

So who is going to do his post op follow up? What if there are complications?

 

Again, this isn't just about America (though if this was such a great thing, why wouldn't there be much more pressure to loosen those restrictions?).

In the UK, for example, private providers can and do work in pretty much the manner you're suggesting, albeit in parallel with the NHS so they tend to compete on elective treatment like cosmetics or low risk procedures like general maternity or minor surgery. That can be great for many of their patients but even the "competitive" prices are out of reach of many people's pockets, it doesn't cover many of the most difficult or expensive provision and it's not without it's problems (for example, there was a high profile issue with breast implants recently, with unsafe implants being used to cut costs).

I could certainly see this kind of market being (or continuing to be) part of an effective healthcare system in any modern nation but alone it can't provide everything we would expect to have available for everyone.

 

I disagree with that. Why on Earth would power-hungry Republicans or Democrats want to forward a system that empowers the individual, brings down costs and opens up competition without government meddling. It's in government's best interests to forward their agenda that keeps and accumulates more power for them.

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It should be just about America, because we face unique challenges. For one, we are killing ourselves collectively with our diet and lack of exercise like no other country. England's system? Fine, if it works for them. And if it does, it's probably because it's about health care. The same doesn't apply here. Health care is about how government is going to make their next power grab. They don't give a flying (*)(*)(*)(*) about your health or mine, only on how they get more control over our lives.

 

What piece of (*)(*)(*)(*) democrat got paid for excluding that?

How much did they get paid to sell out their country?

If you know please post it, and we'll unleash hell upon them.

 

Thank God for this. Lowering prices is MUCH superior to Healthcare/Obamacare. Hey, lower prices and THEN implement Obamacare. It would be no problem affording Obamacare at that point.

 

posting prices online is illegal under obamacare......

thank a democrat progressive communist for ignoring such an obvious freemarket idea.

 

This might get me flamed here but there's really nothing special about America. You have (some) different problems to other countries but the fundamental principals are the same. Our nations have a lot more in common than you might like to imagine.

It's doesn't really work all that well but that's a different matter. Regardless, this topic is about healthcare. It's up to you whether you want to discuss healthcare and how to make it work despite the political trash we all have to deal with or you can just use this as another platform for the petty party politics that infests this forum. I'm only interested in engaging in the former though.

 

A handful of surgeons might make a few extra bucks with this system but overall it cannot work. Surgery isn't like buying an ipad. You can't just send it back across the country for a refund if it doesn't work out. I know from first hand experience surgeons are refusing to do post op care for people that fly to other places to have their surgeries. You can't pay one doctor thousands of dollars to do a two hour surgery and then stick another doctor in you home town with the months of post op follow ups.

 

Actually, America is pretty special. That is why so many people want to come here, because it is special. But you are certainly free to voice your opinion.

Now as I said, we have unique challenges. For example, I was talking to a wonderful Australian couple on a plane the other day. They commented on how they always gain weight when they visit the US because our meal portions are so large. That's a factor in health care. We have too many people who simply eat too much, and/or eat don't eat the right things. Our food pyramid, unique to our country, is a disaster.

Unfortunately, discussing health care in the US goes hand in hand with politics, as we have two parties, both anxious to accumulate more power, offering different disastrous solutions. In reality, the solution isn't political. In fact, most solutions aren't. But with health care, we simply cannot afford another 800% cost overrun like we got with Medicare. That would be the final nail in our coffin.