On: Hospital prices are about to go public in the U.S.

[ethbro]

Caveat: All hospitals not managed identically.

I'm sure there's a lot of varying billing policy, hospital to hospital. And varying ability to financially write off care.

As a gut guess, I'd expect rural hospitals to be the worst about this and suburban the best.

[pcarolan → ethbro]

I'm sure this is true. We've (unfortunately) now experienced this at 4 different hospital systems. The customer service is alarmingly similar.

Hospital: "Call your insurance company and ask for a break" Insurance Company: "Call the hospital and ask for a break"

Also, 2/4 of these hospitals had outsourced their billing which means they can't even make decisions on behalf of the hospital (and have a disincentive to write anything off). Seems like a structural way of avoiding writedowns.

[ethbro → pcarolan]

Was going to ask about outsourcing. I don't know the market on provider billing, but I'd assume there are some companies that manage a number of facilities.

And wow, does that search bring up a lot of astroturf: https://www.google.com/search?q=list+of+medical+billing+comp...