Dive Brief:
- The state of New York has created an online database showing what different hospitals in their charge for more than 1,400 services.
- The database demonstrates that prices for some services can vary tremendously from hospital to hospital; for example, a routine birth in the greater New York City area costs $5,686 at Lutheran Medical Center and $22,143 at Westchester Medical Center.
- The Greater New York Hospital Association released a statement noting that the charges don't reflect the far lower payments hospitals actually get for the services they provide.
Dive Insight:
Hospitals may actually be paid less than the amounts shown in New York's database, but that's not the point of the exercise. Rather, the idea is to offer some transparency when it comes to the range of prices hospitals are charging, a goal the database meets. If New York hospitals are afraid consumers won't like what they see in the database, perhaps it's time to have a discussion with the public as to how prices ended up where they are today.