U.S. health care's widespread overbilling problem

Re:U.S. health care's widespread overbilling problem by Paul-ish on Monday July 10, 2017 @04:20PM (#14739287)

I wonder if there is a straightforward way to aggregate people's bills to estimate the cost of a procedure (eg appendectomy) at a given hospital. Eg pay people $1 to scan their bill. This would only work for common procedures I suppose.

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Re:U.S. health care's widespread overbilling problem by jessaustin on Monday July 10, 2017 @06:32PM (#14740259)

HIPAA was passed largely to prevent this potential catastrophe for healthcare executives. b^)

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Re:U.S. health care's widespread overbilling problem by markolschesky on Monday July 10, 2017 @08:13PM (#14740684)

De-identified data and data contributed by people (read, not Covered Entities) is not covered by HIPAA. Someone could build a database of procedure cost comprised of these data sets, but price transparency isn't so easy due to the nuances of the problem (See Castlight Health).

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Re:U.S. health care's widespread overbilling problem by heartbreak on Monday July 10, 2017 @06:40PM (#14740294)

So build it in Europe?

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Re:U.S. health care's widespread overbilling problem by heartbreak on Monday July 10, 2017 @06:39PM (#14740290)

That's a great idea because the codes are usually on the bill, too. The problem, of course, is keeping all of that volunteered data secure.

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