Bargain bin.

Do any of us really know how much money is exchanged for medical services? The fact is, few (if any?) people in the entire country can truthfully say they understand our intentionally opaque payment system. Although CMS significantly decreased Medicare reimbursement for Gamma Knife radiosurgery in 2013 to equate it with linac-based radiosurgery, here’s an investigation into the list prices for private insurers for radiosurgery techniques across 58 NCI-designated cancer centers. And what a mess it is. First of all, the median price for Gamma Knife ($49,529) was significantly higher than for linac-based single-fraction ($22,915) and muli-fraction ($31,834) radiosurgery. What’s more the ranges were, let us say, wide, topping out at $111,298; $312,480; and $104,396 for the three aforementioned techniques, respectively. Patients might be interested to know, if they are charged >$300K for SRS at one center, they could get the same treatment for <$15K at another. | Prasad, Adv Radiat Oncol 2021