On Oct 31, 6:37 am, Kurt Ullman wrote:
In article ,

wrote:
On Tue, 30 Oct 2007 13:33:35 -0700, RickH
wrote:

When I needed a colonoscopy on my self-pay HSA I called
a few hospitals to get their prices,

To paraphrase one of the astronauts (no pun intended)
"It doesn't give you a confident feeling when the guy who has a pipe 5
feet up youir ass was the lowest bidder"

Of course you are also likely to get ripped off by the highest
bidder.

Actually I wound up going to a stand-alone gastro center, they told me
the price up front, they had a fully-staffed mini-hospital that only
does gastro scopes with several specialists on hand, nurses, emergency
capabilities, etc. I paid $650 and was done in about 3 hours time,
they treated me like a king. The hospital would have cost me close to
$3000. They even took credit cards. Health service delivery in
general needs to move to this model and out from behind the "Iron
Curtain" of hospitals who just specialize in price fixing with their
buddies in the insurance industry.