$7,652 for Anesthesia? The Fight Over Hidden Health Care Costs

0:00 All right, Mark and Joe are back with us here in studio. transparency when it comes to pricing always positive, right? I mean, when I gave birth to my daughter, I was shocked at the hospital bill at the end of it. I mean, it really does add up. You've got the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says the Trump administration also wants to bring transparency to prescription drugs. Here's that. >> Patients will be better able to compare what care costs before they receive it.

0:28 Employers will be better able to judge whether the insurers that they hire are neg negotiating the best prices for their workers. The American people pay for this healthcare system. They have the right to know the prices. >> And this builds on the federal rule that requires hospitals to publish their prices in a machine readable file so patients can actually find and compare the cost of services beforehand. like I said, learning experience for the second child here. I'll be a little bit more prepared. but Mark, you know, this seems to be a positive announcement from the administration.

1:01 >> Yeah, no doubt. And this is the kind of common sense approach to fixing our health care system that does not involve fully bloating and inflating and more giveaways. It is encouraging. It's basic economics, guys. >> If there's no price transparency, what do the market participants have in terms of incentive to be fair in what they charge for things if they don't have to tell people until after you've already committed to it? So this is common sense basic economic policy which should lead if economics hold true and I believe they will in this case not only to transparency but to lowering health care costs overall particularly when it comes to prescript prescription drugs.

1:41 >> Yeah should provide more more choice too. You have the secretary of labor Keith Serland. This is what he had to say about giving Americans more choice when it comes to healthcare. Watch. So whether you are going in for an MRI, scheduling a routine procedure, preparing to have a major surgery, or having a baby, you will know what your care will cost before you receive it. And this is more about just price comparison. It's about the American people, giving them the information to make better decisions about health care and more importantly where their hard-earned money goes. And when you have that information, it creates more choice, more competition, and more opportunity for lower costs.

2:23 >> So it's sticker shock is what people were getting after the fact. Now those prices, Joe, will be upfront where they begin to decide elect whether or not to choose and buy it if or you know move forward with the procedure. >> We all pay for the lack of transparency. I mean, I spent the better part of 90 minutes yesterday on the phone with a service provider. My wife had a 15minute procedure that required anesthesiology. You open up the envelope, the anesthesia, $7,65247.

2:54 And the reality is that's not what my insurance company actually paid them. But it's this notion that people can charge as much as they can get away with because that bill is not going directly to the customer. And those hidden costs when the insurance company just throws up their hands and pays the bill, it passes through to all of those customers. So when we're sitting here trying to say, should we have Medicare for all? Should we be trying to have everyone on private insurance? Should there be some type of hybrid? Whatever the solution is, it has to start with price transparency. It has to start with price accountability because otherwise the bloat is what makes it impossible for everyday American families to get the actual everyday care that we know is important for having a a prosperous nation.

3:42 >> It also impacts quality of care. Joe, you talk about anesthesia. It is one of the things of a good friend that has a large anesthesiology practice. He talks about this all the time. There is a lack of anesthesiologists. They're becoming the hardest to find, the hardest to train because of the price gouging that goes on, not by the practitioners, but by the insurance companies, screwing the hospitals and thereby screwing the consumers. That is not a profession within medicine. We want less of anesthesiologist.

4:11 >> No, definitely not. And you want to make sure that they're fully trained and it's all merit-based and they're able to actually perform what's required of them. And I wonder, you know, we talked about artificial intelligence a little earlier on in the show. You know, how much does AI play into this healthcare debate? And how much research can you as the individual do using these chat bots ahead of time before these procedures to sort of get an idea as to how much things could cost or what to ask?

4:35 >> AI is displacing workers. AI is going to be able to help qualified professionals make quantum leaps in care at the end. In the same way that the pope and father Murray want to have the human at the center, there has to be a human at the center of administering this care because at the end of the day, they are not sentient beings. They are not human beings. They are technology and we have to be willing to make life and death decisions with a certain level of assurance that the person making that decision has not to oppose an account.

5:09 >> You want your surgeon checking chat GPT as he's doing the procedure? What can go wrong right here? >> Hold on. Let me just rock your GP then. Mark, Joe, we got to let you go, but that was a lot of fun. Thank you. >> Great discussion, guys. All right, stay with us.