Where Medical Prices Come From

When a doctor and another doctor love each other very much, they meet in a room and agree to give each other lots of money for doing their jobs. This report about how medical procedures get priced is fantastic. In my head, the prices came from a hearing in Washington filled with some dudes in suits and maybe one woman, but then again, maybe even not — you never know with these dudes in suits.

Anyway, I was mostly right: Dudes in suits, but not in Washington. The meeting is called RUC, and it’s secret and ridiculous and happens in a conference room in a hotel and no one is invited to listen. Conference rooms in hotels makes me think of Legionnaire’s Disease, which: Wouldn’t that be ironic. (The very definition of the thing.) (Well, only if they had just decided to give doctors a huge fee for treating bacterial pneumonia, and then they all had to pay that fee. Not sure. Ask Alanis.)

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