Having a baby in Dallas can cost more than $10,000, according to a new study. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation finds that a C-section in Dallas carries a median price of $9,888, compared to a median price for a vaginal delivery of $7,404. As our Will Maddox writes at D CEO Healthcare, those figures fall somewhere in the middle in the pantheon of sizable U.S. cities.
As Will points out, there’s a push in healthcare toward price transparency, but it’s taken a shape that is not consumer-friendly. Hospitals have begun posting online what they say is the price of certain procedures. Untethered from the impact of insurance, however, those numbers mean next to nothing.
So, it’s good to see researchers doing the work of unearthing the actual costs that healthcare providers negotiate with insurance companies for various procedures. These are the prices that trickle or fall to us, balloon our insurance plans, push up our premiums, and make it more challenging for our employers to up our wages.
