Transparent Hospital Pricing Exposes Wild Fluctuation, Even Within Miles

(By Harriet Blair Rowan for California Healthline produced by Kaiser Health News)

The federal government’s new rule requiring hospitals to post prices for their services is intended to allow patients to shop around and compare prices, a step toward price transparency that California has mandated since 2005.

California Healthline examined the price lists — known in hospital lingo as “chargemasters” — of four large acute care hospitals in Oakland, Calif., and another four in Los Angeles, using the documents California hospitals have been reporting annually to the California Department of Public Health — the same information the federal government is now requiring all hospitals to post on their websites.  Continue reading article here…

This story was produced by Kaiser Health News, which publishes California Healthline, a service of the California Health Care Foundation.”

Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit national health policy news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

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