When you get sick and need medical care, how do you know if you’re being charged a fair price? You don’t because we have never had open pricing in the medical industry in the United States. It’s been kept a secret and people are kept in the dark. In every other phase of our capitalist system, you can ask what something costs and get the answer, which is called “transparency in pricing.” As a result, people don’t get procedures because they’re afraid they can’t afford it. The good news is that the Feds are about to change all of that. Thanks to the advent of HSAs, which require that people pay for medical care themselves, prices of procedures will be posted. They will be available at the Medicare Web site,
medicare.gov. So, for non- emergency care, you can see what a procedure costs and negotiate the price beforehand. Barron’s magazine published a related story recently about the need for this kind of change and Clark agrees 100 percent.
In other medical news, Harvard medical school is now requiring doctors to walk in the shoes of their patients. Part of the training required for doctors is to go through the same hoops to get help and sit in waiting rooms. Clark thinks it’s brilliant. People are customers, not patients and should be treated with good service.
