NOW The Media Writes On OK Surgery Center?

Better late than never....

OKLAHOMA CITY - An Oklahoma City surgery center is offering a new kind of price transparency, posting guaranteed all-inclusive surgery prices online. The move is revolutionizing medical billing in Oklahoma and around the world.

Dr. Keith Smith and Dr. Steven Lantier launched Surgery Center of Oklahoma 15 years ago, founded on the simple principle of price honesty.

"What we've discovered is health care really doesn't cost that much," Dr. Smith said. "What people are being charged for is another matter altogether."

That's right.

Now here's the ugly, and this hasn't been focused on by anyone.

Matthew Gang, 22, tore his patella tendon, dislocating his knee-cap playing basketball earlier this year.

Gang is from California and he is uninsured.

Surgery in his home-state was going to be about $30,000.

The posted price at Surgery Center of Oklahoma was $5,700, one-fifth the price.

What's your Medicare co-pay?

20%, right?

Same for most other "health plans" when it comes to surgery.

Ok.

So the price is 1/5th that of the hospital.

That is, the all-in price is the same as your co-pay.

So what did you buy with your so-called "insurance"?  Nothing.

This is a rather good scam, if you can get away with it.  In any other line of work I'm sure the various attorneys general could come up with a list of violations of consumer protection laws, not to mention just plain-old fashioned racketeering (coercing people to buy something under threat of ruining them when in fact they could buy the same thing for cash were all the collusions not to occur) -- if they cared to.

This is what I've been pointing out now since this debate began -- the entire "industry" is literally stealing 80% of your health care dollars, and when you analyze the issue on a purely arithmetic level you find that you could buy the procedure in cash for your deductible and co-pay combined in many if not most instances.

The remaining and actual risk is for truly catastrophic and rare situations -- such as a car accident that leaves you with a $1m+ medical bill, or a cancer that you can actually beat (that is, it's not a death sentence that simply bleeds your estate to zero before it kills you) but costs $500,000 to successfully beat into indefinite remission.

True catastrophic insurance to cover those extremely rare incidents could be had very cheaply; certainly less than $100 a month even for older people and probably for less than $1/day.

You're being robbed folks, and Obamacare is simply institutionalization of the robbery in such a fashion that it becomes much more difficult to stop.