Talking a Hospital Sticker Price

    Free market versus rug market    
 
  The easiest way to grasp the business model of any hospital is to think of it as giant hotel offering a costly menu of life-saving services to its guests.
    Because  – like your basic Holiday Inn – your typical hospital is all about the “bottom line” generated by its paying-buns-in-beds.
   Only the “guest services” at a hospital are far more expensive, emotion-charged and techo-mysterious than a Motel 6.
     Oh yes.
     Again, like most hotels and motels, the sticker price for “guest services”  at various hospitals can be as insanely diverse as a hot sheet motel versus a five-star resort.
     For example:
     Suppose Mom needs of a hysterectomy .
     Naturally, as a good Republican familiar with America’s “free market” health care system, Mom sets out to nail down the best deal on a hysterectomy  in Broward County.
     Which she’s able to do, thanks to a internet data base maintained Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration at http://www.floridahealthfinder.gov/comparecare/CompareFacilities.aspx
     Trouble is, as Mom quickly learns, the "free market" price range for a hysterectomy is straight out of a tourist’s worst nightmare in an Arab Bazaar.
     Hospital               Hysterectomy Sticker Price
                                                Low End           High End
    State average                 $23,811            $46,500
    Northwest                        $43,373            $66,870
    Florida Medical               $38,908            $57,818
    Westside                           $36,656            $56,435   
    Holy Cross                        $34,237            $49,836
    Plantation                         $31,094            $42,497
    Memorial South              $29,978            $41,919
    Memorial Pembroke     $29,257            $46,387
    Memorial Miramar        $28,378            $40,136   
    Memorial West               $26,263            $34,875
    Imperial Point                  $25,106            $36,653
    Memorial Regional         $24,166            $30,891
    Broward General            $23,259            $32,701
    Cleveland Clinic               $22,859            $38,088
    North Broward                $21,776            $30,806
    Coral Springs                    $18,576            $31,214