In New Orleans area, treatment of heart failure without complications ranges from almost $9,000 to more than $22,000.
Federal regulators released a huge swath of hospital pricing data Wednesday as part of what President Barack Obama's administration said is an effort to foster more transparency in the often-opaque health care industry. Those figures show a wide disparity in the amount hospitals charge for taking care of patients with the same malady, including within the same city or region.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services highlighted the wide range nationally for joint replacement procedures, noting that an Oklahoma hospital had an average charge of $5,300 compared to a hospital in Monterey Park, Calif., that charged $223,000.
The prices that hospitals report to the federal government aren't what most consumers end up paying. The federal Medicare and Medicaid programs pay much less. Private insurers too negotiate lower prices for their customers.
But Jonathan Blum, director for the Center for Medicare, said the "charge master" data provided by hospitals is still useful as a comparison tool.
"The folks most directly impacted by it are those who don't have public insurance (like Medicare or Medicaid) or private insurance, those who are paying for hospital care out of pocket," he said. "Chances are, this is going to be the prices that you are charged."
For those patients, the data shows that hospitals in the New Orleans area potentially charge a wide range of prices. Patients taken to the hospital for the treatment of heart failure without any complications could end up paying twice as much, depending on which hospitals they are brought to.
At the low end, St. Charles Parish Hospital had an average price of $8,929, while Lakeview Regional Medical Center in Covington charged an average cost of $22,334.
Many hospitals will negotiate with uninsured patients, although they generally lack the leverage of a major health insurer.
Kim Melvin, director of marketing at Lakeview Regional, said patients who need to handle their own bills are typically eligible for the hospital's charity care program. Uninsured patients also can get discounts, which she described as "similar to the discounts a private insurance plan gets."
But Moriba Karamoko, director of the Louisiana Consumer Healthcare Coalition, said the average uninsured consumer often isn't aware they could ask a hospital to negotiate a charge. They also often don't know about hospital charity programs that can help with bills, although the Obama administration's federal health law requires that they begin disseminating that information more widely.