Medical (Bills, Bills, Bills)

New York Times reporter Elisabeth Rosenthal went on The Leonard Lopate Show today to discuss her first article in a series investigating why the U.S. leads the world in health care expenditures. One of the many problems: Nobody really knows what things cost (“even doctors often do not know the costs of the tests and procedures they prescribe”), and the cost of procedures vary widely from state to state depending on things unrelated to quality. “The variability doesn’t really have to do with quality, it has to do with these negotiations between insurers — how powerful your doctor or your hospital network is,” Rosenthal says.

Previously: Bitter Pill

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