THE HEALTHCARE PRICING GAME.

We've gotten used to the pricing game.

The one where you go to get something fixed or replaced and have no idea what it will cost upfront.

Doctor visits, procedures, medical devices - the pricing is a tightly shut black box.

We're told not to worry, just get the care we need and let the bureaucrats, insurance companies and medical coders argue over the charges later.

Heaven forbid we should know the price before we buy.

Can you imagine going shopping and having zero clue what anything costs?

What a grocery store or car dealership that must be.

Yet that's exactly how our entire $5 trillion healthcare industry operates.

An archaic lack of transparency that benefits no one but the administrators paid to erect financial obstacles at every turn.

What if we turned it all upside down?

What if pricing for everything from an MRI to a hip replacement to pediatric chemotherapy was upfront, clear, and straightforward?

No more games or gotchas.

Patients could make educated decisions about what care is worth the cost. Prices could be shopped around to find good value.

Competition and free markets could put downward pressure on egregious profiteering.

We'd have the invaluable context that transparent pricing provides for virtually every other major purchase in our lives.

Except this purchase is far more critical - it's our health we're talking about.

As patients, we deserve to know the price tag for our care before we buy.

It's time to rip away the opaque curtain and expose the pricing games to the disinfecting sunlight of transparency.

-Rojas out.