Although medical bills account for about 1.7 million U.S. bankruptcies, asking providers and comparing information about health care costs isn’t top of mind for most Americans. Instead, less than half of Americans always ask their doctors, “How much does that cost?”
Even if they did ask, they’d get widely different answers. Across the country, doctors and hospitals don’t deliver the same consistent results for the same price—you can’t bank on getting better care just because you pay more.
Then, when you add in the complexity of insurance plans and consumers’ lack of health insurance understanding, you get a large—and costly—knowledge gap.