Health treatment pricing info now online
Here's a blurb and a link to a google spreadsheet with pricing data from Minnesota hospitals as distributed by the Obama Administration.
Actual pricing data for the cost for health treatment charged by hospitals is now available online.
The Obama administration released what more than 3,000 hospitals nationwide, including 50 in Minnesota, charged for the 100 most common inpatient treatments and procedures in 2011.
If you've been curious to see what your charge to treat pneumonia or a heart attack for instance, now's your chance.
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One caveat, the data is based on the hospitals' "chargemaster," or their list price. But typically private insurers, Medicare, Medicaid, and some uninsured in Minnesota get deep discounts. The data from the US Health and Human Services Department show what individual hospitals charge Medicare and what they were actually paid.
The data are intended to give consumers and researchers insight into how hospital charges can vary widely for the same procedure even in the same city. Federal officials hope consumers will use the information to raise questions about hospital charges and put pressure on medical centers to offer competitive prices.
The administration released the data in a complicated spreadsheet. MPR News compiled 10 selected treatments and how individual hospitals compare.
The entire dataset for all 50 states and the District of Columbia is available online.