Need Inexpensive Surgery? Go Free Market

Check out the website of the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, which defies current practice by actually listing its prices on its website. Their prices are as low as one-fifth those of typical hospitals. Practitioners avoid government involvement in their practice as much as possible. On the welcome page we read:

If you have a high deductible or are part of a self-insured plan at a large company, you owe it to yourself or your business to take a look at our facility and pricing which is listed on this site. If you are considering a trip to a foreign country to have your surgery, you should look here first. Finally, if you have no insurance at all, this facility will provide quality and pricing that we believe are unmatched.

It is no secret to anyone that the pricing of surgical services is at the top of the list of problems in our dysfunctional healthcare system. Bureaucracy at the insurance and hospital levels, cost shifting and the absence of free market principles are among the culprits for what has caused surgical care in the United States to be cost prohibitive. As more and more patients find themselves paying more and more out of pocket, it is clear that something must change. We believe that a very different approach is necessary, one involving transparent and direct pricing.

Check them out.

G. Keith Smith, M.D.

Glad you found our website! Posting our prices has caused quite a stir here locally and nationally, as well. I have read and thoroughly enjoyed each of your books…keep up the good work.
G. Keith Smith, M.D.
http://www.MacStartup.com Kevin Cullis

Wow!! Thanks Tom for the link, I’ve passed it along.
Paulmollon

Shame, shame, that’s profiteering on the backs of sick people. That’s a two tier system – one for the rich and one for the rest of us. We can’t have “full access” to health care like this! I know all this because my all-knowing medical/bureaucratic/political overlords here in Ontario told me so.
http://www.facebook.com/gviaud George Viaud

Tom I’ve only seen individual doctors who do this – it is great to see an entire hospital doing it.

Isn’t this sort of how it was (without the advertising) before Insurance Companies took hold?? I think you have a few paragraphs (or a chapter) about this in Rollback?)
http://www.starvingthemonkeys.com/ Johnanddagnygalt

also check out SimpleCare
http://traditionalliberalism.blogspot.com/ classicalliberal

This is a great find, Tom! I have always thought that prices should be shown just like we see prices of anything else but it rarely happens because insurance/government will “pay” for it. I know Minute Clinics do it too but the practice of transparent price listings is rare and really should catch on.
http://www.kennethballard.com Kenneth

Part of the problem as well is that patients appear to wait till pretty much they have no choice but to get the surgery before actually getting care. It could be a problem they’ve ignored because they didn’t think it was much until it certainly was much, or they were stubborn, or were concerned about cost.

My wife had been having recurrent upper-abdominal pain. Now one rule regarding pain is that if it comes back and keeps coming back, then you need to see a doctor as something is not right. We thought we were okay because the pain kept going away with over the counter treatment. We thought it might just be a recurrent digestive issue that we could wait to get checked out.

Then we got to a point where even that wasn’t working. An ultrasound at the ER showed that her gallbladder was chock full of marbles and I don’t think we had much leeway to call around the various surgery centers in my area. She was scheduled for surgery the next morning. Thankfully they were able to remove her gallbladder laproscopically and she was released about 24 hours after the surgery.

If we had gotten her checked out sooner, the surgery could have been scheduled at an outpatient surgery center instead of on admission to the hospital, but it’s one of those many unknowns. The laproscopic procedure also told me that we likely could have found a surgery center to do the procedure for less than the hospital, but we couldn’t really know that at the time.

And unfortunately cost, and also naivety, seems to be driving people out of healthcare until the last minute, such as in the case of my wife. And it is the last minute when things tend to be the most expensive.

So it’s not just about advertising prices so that patients can see up front how much something might cost. It’s also about getting people into the healthcare system regularly so that issues can be caught soon enough to take advantage of those lower prices instead of so late that the hospital seems like the only option.
Anonymous

And now imagine where those prices would be a in a free market… hope to see more places start doing this.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Ken-MacMillan/683031628 Ken MacMillan

Sounds like the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons.

http://www.aapsonline.org/
http://www.youtube.com/user/aapsonline
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9s6l9srzDU
Moskowitz Yd

This is helpful in a much deeper way than just allowing people to know what something costs (what a concept!). When people recognize the cost of being unhealthy and are made to bear the entire cost of it without government intervention, they will start to take responsibility for their health. Eat better, exercise etc.
By separating the end user from the actual cost, we are creating a moral hazard and inevitebly end up with the epidemic levels of obesity, diabetes and cancer. people have handed over the responsibility of their own bodies to gov/insurance companies.

Free market saves lives, no doubt about it.
Dh

thanks so much for posting resources related to free market health care. i can confirm the price difference for at least one procedure…i had a lymph node biopsy last year, for which my insurance company was billed $10,000. it was in my neck, relatively accessible. this Oklahoma place charges a bit over $2k.
Anonymous

You write:

“When people recognize the cost of being unhealthy and are made to bear the entire cost of it without government intervention, they will start to take responsibility for their health. Eat better, exercise etc.”

BTW, I really love your slogan “Free Market saves lives”. That’s so true in so many different ways. Apart from saving lives it dramatically enhances that quality of it (imagine what actual freedom would mean for us, the people .

Back to the quote.
I sympathize and agree with your general point, except for one caveat: what if the health industry and its state-sponsored institutions are part of the welfare state system as well? Are you sure that the so-called health experts – with their dubious crusade against cholesterol and saturated fat – are sufficiently independent from government interference?

I think some kind of quality-label is in order, along the lines of “GVT-free” (government free) as in 100% guaranteed without any form of government subsidies. A little description could be attached (in some tooltip form) explaining how the organization can proudly say that their activities are at the service of the people instead of based on the state-sponsored expropriation of their property (i.e. tax money).

Any ideas for the logo are welcome.

Kind regs from Amsterdam,
Richard
http://twitter.com/AnonymousHench Bruno Tata

My wife had some knee procedures done that involved injecting a substance to replace cartilige destroyed by arthritis. She asked the person at the front desk for a quote before going ahead and was told “it’s ok, your insurance covers it”. She had to explain that we have a high deductible policy ($40000), hence “no, it isn’t covered at all”. They were flabbergasted and confused. They apparently never have anyone bother to ask “how much”. It turned out the going rate was “$500 per knee” for a procedure that took about a minute. But what’s really insane is because of insurance limitations, one has to come in TWICE at one month intervals to get it done. They will not cover (or apply to deductible) the treatments if done both at once (saving doctor time as well as patients). This sort of screwy stuff explains a lot to me about why costs have risen so much.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1068833855 Hank Xavier

Way to go Dr.Keith!!
Ronald

15K for penile prosthesis. Sweet deal. Thanks, Tom.
dayzbeth

this is why the government needs to get out of our way and let the markets decide. This is GENIUS, and yet such a simple solution. I wish we could nix insurance all together and go to straight service for pay. It would cut the costs by simply getting rid of all the red tape.
G. Keith Smith, M.D.

Our prices are usually 20% of what you will find at a local “not for profit” hospital. Sometimes they are 1/10. Hope your biopsy came out ok.
G. Keith Smith, M.D.
G. Keith Smith, M.D.

That is exactly what we have found. I clearly state at the top of our prices page that if we are filing insurance for the patient, the following prices do not apply…you have hit the nail on the head. Thanks for your comments.
G. Keith Smith, M.D.
PB1051

Awesome. This is great!
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