Jeanne Pinder
Summary: Prices paid by insurers for common procedures vary wildly. Two recent reports from the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, which insures one of three Americans, point to the discrepancies.
Jeanne Pinder
“We analyzed the 2009 Medicare inpatient claims data and other databases to estimate Medicare payments for primary or revision total knee arthroplasty (TKA). The average Medicare hospital payment per procedure was $13,464 for primary TKA (n=227,587) and $17,331 for revision TKA (n=18,677). For both primary and revision TKAs Medicare payments varied substantially across patients, hospitals […]
Jeanne Pinder
An ad for surgery on the side of a bus is guaranteed to get my attention. So this ad for “custom knee replacement” at the Raritan Bay Medical Center was definitely of interest. I called the hospital to ask what that means, and what it would cost. The customization comes, according to Maryann Finney, assistant director […]
Jeanne Pinder
“How much should a knee replacement cost?” It’s a topic Dr. Blair Rhode writes about on an orthopedic surgery web site, about bringing a retail method to medical pricing. “If an uninsured patient went to a local hospital and asked to pay cash for a knee replacement, they would likely be quoted a number close to […]
