Hospitals Say They Will Publish Previously Secret Prices

[Hoyt]

10. Oh, it would be a mess. If hospitals were paid at Medicaid rates and even Medicare, we'd see big

wards again, one nurse for 3 times the patients as now, patients thrown out of recovery rooms and off floors long before medically advisable (it's bad enough now), etc.

On the positive side. I'm really not sure why larger cities have so many hospitals. They end up competing against each other for patients, building these massive facilities with big atriums, etc.

In any event, we'd need to spend much more than Medicare per patient unless folks are willing to accept a lot of mistakes in care. There are already enough of those. I used to do studies -- like medication errors -- in hospitals. There were lots of mistakes, although most were just recording errors.

Somebody will need to come up with a plan.

It's too big a topic to cover here.