4.1 • 11.9K Ratings
🗓️ 20 February 2019
⏱️ 7 minutes
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0:00.0 | This TED Talk features journalist and health care cost investigator, Jeannie Pinder, recorded live at TED Residency 2018. |
0:12.0 | So a little while ago, members of my family had three bits of minor surgery, about a half hour each, and we got three sets of bills. |
0:23.2 | For the first one, the anesthesia bill alone was $2,000. The second one, $2,000. The third one, $6,000. So I'm a journalist. I'm like, |
0:34.0 | what's up with that? I found out that I was actually for the expensive one, |
0:39.6 | being charged $1,419 for a generic anti-nautia drug |
0:45.4 | that I could buy online for $2.49. |
0:50.2 | I had a long and unsatisfactory argument |
0:52.4 | with the hospital, the insurer, and my employer. |
0:56.0 | Everybody agreed that this was totally fine. |
0:59.3 | But it got me thinking, the more I talk to people, |
1:01.4 | the more I realized nobody has any idea what stuff costs in health care. |
1:05.7 | Not before, during, or after that procedure or test. |
1:08.8 | Do you have any idea what it's going to cost? |
1:11.1 | It's only months later that you get an explanation of benefits that explains during or after that procedure or test, do you have any idea what it's going to cost? |
1:14.6 | It's only months later that you get an explanation of benefits |
1:16.6 | that explains exactly nothing. |
1:19.9 | So this came back to me a little while later. |
1:22.4 | I'd volunteered for a buyout from the New York Times, |
1:25.6 | or I'd worked for more than 20 years as a journalist. |
1:30.1 | I was looking for my next act. It turned out that next act was to build a company telling people what stuff costs in health care. I won a shark tank-type pitch |
1:35.2 | contest to do just that. Health costs ate up almost 18 percent of our gross domestic product last |
1:40.9 | year, but nobody has any idea what stuff costs. But what if we did know? |
... |
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