DENVER — Gov. Jared Polis (D-Colorado) unveiled a new website Tuesday he admits might make you a little mad. “We should be angry,” he said at an afternoon press conference.
“That’s a good thing.” With the help of the nonprofit PatientRightsAdvocate.org, the state of Colorado is pushing patients toward a website that’s designed to help them better understand what hundreds of procedures might cost.
> Visit the Colorado Hospital Price Finder website by clicking here . Looking for a CT scan or X-ray or even a colonoscopy? The website is designed to tell you before you visit just how much it will cost you and your insurance plan. Thanks to a change in federal (and state) laws, hospitals across the country are having to report not just their customary charges before insurance is applied, but the charges they apply to various insurance plans as well.
The information is currently public, but it’s a challenge to find and aggregate in order to compare one hospital with another. That's why websites like this are popping up across the country. It’s hoped, eventually, we'll be able to find hospital prices in much the same way we currently find tickets for flights.
Within the data you’re likely to find large variations in prices based on hospital name and location as well as which insurance plan is being used. That’s the part that might make you mad, Polis said. But that, he said, might be a good thing if it shows people how absurd some of the routine charges actually.