The difference being the insurance companies and ambulance chasing lawyers.
A young man from one of my previous churches was on a mission trip to Guatemala in 2007. He was monkeying around with the local kids (literally jumping from tree to tree) when he misjudged and fell about 15 ft. breaking his arm just a bit above the wrist.
He went to a private hospital there (the public hospitals are scary) and had surgery to put a plate and screws in. Total cost was about $800. When he got back state-side, his normal doctor told him the same procedure would have been 10 - 15 times that amount.
Thing is - will Obamacare “fix” this problem? Of course not.
As you can see from reading the comments, patients don't usually pay MSRP, even in New York.
South Florida is flush with Brazilians and they will fly back there frequently.
Mammograms are $50, dental works is really cheap, meds, etc... It comes out cheaper to pay the air fare and have the treatment than pay here.
Much of the cost is due to the free hospital procedures for the illegals and uninsured.
A local friend fell and broke her wrist. The ER cost for a couple of hours, which would have been 30 minutes for the actual time it took to set the wrist, temporarily, and a couple of Xrays, was $12,000.
Two days later an Ortho Surgeon with an outpatient surgery put in a titanium plate and reset her wrist. She as in pre op for a couple of hours where nothing was done besides a little Versed to calm her down, a 30 minute surgery, one hour in post op, and her husband took her home. The iv generic Versed and an iv of Dextrose got billed at $600.
The hospital billed her for $100,000 for the same day surgery. She was in surgery as noted for 30 minutes and post op for one hour. The surgeon’s bill was 12K.
Medicare paid $1400 for her ER visit, and $6,000 for her outpatient surgery. The surgeon got paid 3K and that included her follow up in his office.
The husband noted that during his wife’s wait in the ER waiting room and for him in the family post op waiting room, he was the only one that spoke English. The post op waiting room had Hispanics, Pakistanis, and some eastern Euro language, he couldn’t place.
To stay open, hospitals have to play this over billing game to pay for the uninsured.
There's only so much medical care to go around and competition for these finite services drives prices up. The more the government spends, the more private insurance must spend to keep up and the more the private sector spends, the more the government must spend to to keep up.
The government takes your own money from you so that another person can use it to compete with you in the market for medical services. Of course prices will go up!
A $100,000 surgery here gets reimbursed at a fraction of that. Ask any doctor.