An Arm and a Leg: This health economist wants your medical bills

[ck4829]

Economist Vivian Ho has been researching the U.S. health care system for four decades. These days, she's focused on what she thinks are the biggest burdens on the average American: runaway hospital prices and rising health insurance premiums.

She has developed a strategy for addressing high insurance premiums — one that's based on giving patients reliable information about how much they, and their insurer, would have to pay for care. The system is already working in Massachusetts. Could it be a model for the rest of the country?

Ho explains to Dan Weissmann, host of "An Arm and a Leg," why she thinks this approach could help curb high prices and how listeners can help prove it by sharing their medical bills.

Vivian Ho: Exactly. We've been doing research lately that unfortunately shows that our not-for-profit hospitals behave a lot like for-profit companies.

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20251105/An-Arm-and-a-Leg-This-health-economist-wants-your-medical-bills.aspx

[markodochartaigh]

1. The

"not-for-profit" for which I worked for three decades reclassified all registered nurses as "management" and then forced us to work unpaid overtime for a decade while taking one third of all of the money that the hospital brought in to pay administration.