Budgeting's a pretty smart idea—my dad taught me that one. Allocate your funds where they need to go and know where they're going. Think about all the basics and all the luxuries. But one thing I learned on my own is it's difficult to budget when you have no idea how much something is going to cost—especially when you can be off by $50,000 or so.
When it comes to health care, there's no reliable way to estimate how much a procedure's going to cost. And (lucky for us), a new government report tells us there's nothing we can do about it.
To even have a slight concept of what we have to pay for a health care service, we'd need to know exactly what treatment and services we're going to receive, the negotiated rates each medical provider involved in our care charges for those procedures, and exactly how our insurance plan is structured in terms of coverage and deductibles.
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Basically, the U.S. Government Accountability Office says, we're got little to no chance anticipating costs or of having the opportunity to look for less expensive options.
Proving its case, the GAO anonymously contacted providers and requested the price of selected services to gain a consumer's perspective. Reaching out to 19 different hospitals to ask about the cost of a full-knee replacement surgery resulted in estimates of anywhere from $33,000 to $101,000. But that's not even that accurate because the surgeon, the anesthesiologist and all others involved (maybe even that one nurse that always tells you to relax) might have rates other than the hospital's.
Oh, and the consumer is in charge of finding out this information—cause that's all I'd want to do before I go in for some sort of surgery.
And get this: Doctors' offices wouldn't even touch the estimate of a diabetes screening when the GAO called. (Apparently these incredibly common diseases and tests are just so unpredictable).
So we're left in the dark about our health care bills and our budget looks as shaky as if Obama had been trying to tinker with it.
Plus, there's this bad cycle the health care industry just can't seem to shake: Hospital and physician reps tell consumers to speak to their insurer; and the insurer points us back to the reps for more information.
I personally don't have the time or patience or budget for any of that—especially now that more and more consumers are shouldering more health care costs than ever. In fact, the average premium an individual coughs up jumped 10 percent just from last year.
Maybe it's time for insurers to step up, promising us more (or any) price transparency. It sure seems like something's gotta give soon, but all I know is I've got a doctor's appointment tomorrow and I'm a little scared as to how much it'll cost me.
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