623% Price Difference for Common Surgery

If you were to apply a 623% price differential to an average gallon of gasoline, it would be like one station charging $2.73 per gallon compared to another station charging $17.01 per gallon.

In a society and economy where people will go out of their way, drive an extra 5 miles, just to go to a gas station that charges $0.05 less per gallon, one starts to wonder why more people don’t put forth any effort to save thousands, tens of thousands of dollars on health care????

Not too long ago I decided to document this astonishing reality in healthcare by calling around a couple of different health care facilities/hospitals, and inquiring about pricing on a very common outpatient surgical procedure: an open-reduction carpal tunnel release surgery.

The prices, after all discounts, ranged from over $14,000 down to a low of $2,400, which happens to be our DIRECT CONTRACTED rate with a premier outpatient surgery center here in Amarillo.

In addition, my $2,400 direct contracted rate INCLUDES the facility fee, the surgeon’s fee, and the anesthesiologist’s fee. It’s a bundled rate.

In this video, all the prices I’m being quoted are just for the facility alone, not including surgeon and anesthesia.

If you’re a self-funded employer, pay attention….these price differences directly effect you.

When we share our strategies and solutions with employers, they quickly realize how straight-forward and simplistic it really is to lower healthcare costs.

The funnest part about this project was listening to these facilities talk about their “generous discounts” for both self-pay patients, as well as insured patients.

Remember, your PPO discount is probably getting you a 50% discount off of the BILLED amounts…..and the first facility, the hospital, the billed amount was over $22,000! A 50% discount off that amount is still more than 4.5 TIMES higher than our direct contracted, bundled rate. Where’s the value????

Josh Butler

Josh is the President of Butler Benefits & Consulting. Passionate about healthcare reform and helping employers save money while improving the quality of employee benefits.

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