Medical Bills No Longer Have Anything to do With Reality

Medical Bills No Longer Have Anything to do With Reality. Imagine this: You go into a coffeeshop to buy a cup of coffee. When it comes time to shell out, you pay a sum that has nothing to do with the actual cost of the coffee bean, roasting, manpower, coffee cup, and so on. Yeah, that’s how medicine works: no one actually knows how much a medical procedure costs, which makes cutting expenses a little tricky, to say the least. It’s a fact that’s finally caught the attention of a few healthcare professionals — including several locals here at Children’s Hospital and Partners Healthcare — who’re doing the legwork to start figuring out basic things, like … who knew nearly 50 percent of the price tag from a cleft palate fix is due to the room the patient stays in? And that if you you put the patient in a different room with fewer of those unnecessary bells and whistles, the surgery gets a lot more affordable. Baby steps, medical billing field. Baby steps. [New York Times]