America’s Health Insurance Plans survey on health care pricing

From the New York Times article "Survey Finds High Fees Common in Medical Care":

“A patient in Illinois was charged $12,712 for cataract surgery. Medicare pays $675 for the same procedure. In California, a patient was charged $20,120 for a knee operation that Medicare pays $584 for.
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It’s the wild, wild West when it comes to prices of anything in the U.S. health care system, whether for a doctor visit or for hospital charges,” said Jonathan S. Skinner, a health economist at Dartmouth.
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But Dr. Robert M. Wah, a spokesman for the American Medical Association, said there was another side to the story: insurers’ low payments to doctors who enter into contracts with them and the doctors’ difficulties, in many cases, in getting paid at all.
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Karen M. Ignagni, president and chief executive of America’s Health Insurance Plans, had a different view, saying: “As we think about the health care debate, what’s been talked about is, What are the cost-sharing levels? What are the premium levels? How much do health plans pay? No politician has asked how much is being charged.”

Click here to access the NYT article.