Would you pay $18.93 for a gallon of gas when the real price is only $2.50? If you’ve had surgery at many Oklahoma hospitals, there’s a good chance you have experienced that level of price gouging.

Because hospitals exist in a market that lacks price transparency and competition, they are free to slap patients with wildly inflated bills. This fact has become obvious thanks to a new federal requirement imposed on hospitals as of Jan. 1, 2021, that requires them to post price information online, including estimates for 300 common procedures. Those estimates should include “gross charges, discounted cash prices, payer-specific negotiated charges, and deidentified minimum and maximum negotiated charges.”

It probably won’t surprise you to learn many hospitals are dragging their feet. My colleague at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, Policy Research Fellow Kaitlyn Jasper, reviewed Oklahoma hospitals’ websites and found fewer than half of 107 public hospitals were fully compliant.

But the information that is posted starkly illustrates how hospitals use a lack of transparency to price-gouge patients. To cite one example, the posted price for gallbladder removal ranges from $1,365 to $38,629.

Several hospitals included disclaimers suggesting they posted only the facility fee and that additional bills could be tacked on for a surgeon, anesthesiologist, nurse practitioner, etc. As a result, that lowest price for gallbladder removal may not be the full cost (although the same things holds true for the highest prices posted as well.) But the Surgery Center of Oklahoma, which has long posted all-inclusive advance pricing for surgeries, does gallbladder removal for $6,465. Many Oklahoma hospitals are charging multiples more.

In fact, hospitals within the same system are charging different prices for the same procedure. An uninsured patient getting gallbladder removal at Integris Hospital in Miami will be billed $24,656, but at Integris Baptist in Oklahoma City the same patient will pay $38,629.

When the Kempton Group’s Healthcare Bluebook reviewed the prices for 10 procedures in the Oklahoma City market, the organization found the average variance between the lowest and highest prices averaged 757 percent. For one procedure, the difference was 1122 percent!

Such abuses are why we at the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs have urged state lawmakers to require hospitals to provide comprehensive, advance pricing for medical procedures. Transparency is the best way to drive consumer prices down without harming the viability of the overall medical system.

As things stand now, with little transparency, Oklahoma consumers must depend on hospital administrators to place the needs of consumers ahead of their desire for even fatter profit margins—and we already know how that’s working out.

Jonathan Small serves as president of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs (www.ocpathink.org)