Solar NewtSources and credits
Hospital Prices Are Public So Why Is Your Bill a Mystery?
Every American hospital has had to publish its prices since January 2021. The hospitals sued to stop it and lost, and still almost no one can tell you in advance what a surgery will cost. This page lists every source behind the video's claims and credits every piece of footage, image, sound and music in it.
Figures are dated in the video and below. Snapshot numbers, including compliance rates, fines and dispute counts, were current when the video was locked in August 2026 and will move.
Chapters
- 0:00Three prices for one heart attack
- 2:16Part 1 · The list
- 6:23Part 2 · The chaos
- 9:59The law that won
- 11:41Part 3 · The paper victory
- 17:25Part 4 · Why it keeps failing
- 22:23Part 5 · Where prices exist
- 26:08What it costs, and what it means
Sources (56)
Grouped by the part of the story they support. Where a figure comes from an advocacy group or a vendor, the video says so out loud. How many hospitals comply depends on what counts as compliant, so the video shows the strict, the official and the loose measures side by side.
Three bills
- KFF Health News and NPR, Bill of the Month, "A Jolt To The Jugular! You're Insured But Still Owe $109K For Your Heart Attack," August 27, 2018, and the follow-up "The $109K Heart Attack Bill Is Down To $332"
- Steven Brill, "Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us," TIME, March 4, 2013 (the Janice S. bills, as reported)
- Erik Wemple, "Time publishes 24,105-word cover story," The Washington Post, February 21, 2013
- Nina Bernstein, "How to Charge $546 for Six Liters of Saltwater," The New York Times, August 26, 2013
The list price, 1965 to today
- Optum, "Chargemaster maintenance" white paper
- Allen Dobson et al. (The Lewin Group), A Study of Hospital Charge Setting Practices, report to the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, December 2005
- Gerard F. Anderson, "From 'Soak The Rich' To 'Soak The Poor': Recent Trends In Hospital Pricing," Health Affairs 26(3), 2007
- Ge Bai and Gerard F. Anderson, "Extreme Markup: The Fifty US Hospitals With The Highest Charge-To-Cost Ratios," Health Affairs 34(6), 2015, from Medicare cost reports
- U.S. Department of Justice, "Tenet Healthcare Corporation to Pay U.S. More Than $900 Million to Resolve False Claims Act Allegations," June 29, 2006
- Uwe E. Reinhardt, "The Pricing Of U.S. Hospital Services: Chaos Behind A Veil Of Secrecy," Health Affairs 25(1), 2006
- Christopher Linde and Leonard E. Egede, "Do Chargemaster Prices Matter?" Medical Care 60(8), 2022
- Zack Cooper, Stuart V. Craig, Martin Gaynor and John Van Reenen, "The Price Ain't Right? Hospital Prices and Health Spending on the Privately Insured," Quarterly Journal of Economics 134(1), 2019
The chaos, measured
- RAND Corporation, Hospital Price Transparency Study, Round 5.1: prices paid to hospitals by private health plans, 2024
- Health Care Cost Institute, "Past the Price Index: Exploring Actual Prices Paid for Specific Services by Metro Area," 2019
- PatientRightsAdvocate.org, Interim Semi-Annual Hospital Price Transparency Report, September 2025 (an advocacy group; the American Hospital Association disputes its method, as the video says)
- Yang Wang, Mark K. Meiselbach, John S. Cox, Gerard F. Anderson and Ge Bai, "The Relationships Among Cash Prices, Negotiated Rates, And Chargemaster Prices For Shoppable Hospital Services," Health Affairs 42(4), 2023
The transparency laws
- Public Health Service Act §2718(e), 42 U.S.C. §300gg-18(e), added by the Affordable Care Act, 2010
- Executive Order 13877, "Improving Price and Quality Transparency in American Healthcare To Put Patients First," June 24, 2019 (Federal Register)
- CMS, Price Transparency Requirements for Hospitals To Make Standard Charges Public, final rule, 84 FR 65524, November 27, 2019, effective January 1, 2021, including CMS's own compliance-cost estimate; CMS Hospital Price Transparency program page
- American Hospital Association v. Azar, U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, No. 20-5193, decided December 29, 2020
- 45 CFR 180.90, civil monetary penalties (Electronic Code of Federal Regulations)
- Yu Jiang, Daniel Polsky, Jennifer Littlejohn, Yang Wang, Hossein Zare and Ge Bai, "Factors Associated with Compliance to the Hospital Price Transparency Final Rule: a National Landscape Study," Journal of General Internal Medicine 37(14), 2022
- HHS Office of Inspector General, audit A-07-22-06108, on hospital compliance with the price transparency rule, November 2024
- PatientRightsAdvocate.org, semi-annual hospital price transparency reports, July 2023 to September 2025
- Turquoise Health, hospital compliance tracking (share of hospitals posting a price file)
- CMS, Hospital Price Transparency enforcement actions (civil monetary penalty notices), page as read in August 2026
- U.S. Government Accountability Office, GAO-25-106995, on CMS oversight of hospital price transparency
- Kyle Muhlestein et al., "Commercial Insurer Price Transparency: A Comparison Of Four National Payers," Health Affairs Forefront, May 25, 2023
- CMS, Federal Independent Dispute Resolution public reports (No Surprises Act)
- Congressional Research Service, R48738, No Surprises Act Independent Dispute Resolution Process Data Analysis for 2024
- Georgetown University Center on Health Insurance Reforms, "Independent Dispute Resolution Process 2024 Data: High Volume, More Provider Wins"
- Executive Order 14221, "Making America Healthy Again by Empowering Patients With Clear, Accurate, and Actionable Healthcare Pricing Information," February 25, 2025 (Federal Register)
- CMS, fact sheet on the CY 2026 OPPS and ASC final rule, hospital price transparency policy changes, November 21, 2025
Why it keeps failing
- CMS, No Surprises Act and good faith estimate materials
- Svend Albæk, Peter Møllgaard and Per B. Overgaard, "Government-Assisted Oligopoly Coordination? A Concrete Case," Journal of Industrial Economics 45(4), 1997
- Sunita Desai et al., "Offering A Price Transparency Tool Did Not Reduce Overall Spending Among California Public Employees And Retirees," Health Affairs 36(8), 2017
- Turquoise Health, "Is Price Transparency Helping?" white paper, October 2024 (vendor research, as the video says)
- Xiao et al., "Transparency, Repricing, and Price Convergence in Cancer Care," Value in Health 29(7), 2026
- Zack Cooper and Fiona Scott Morton, "Out-of-Network Emergency-Physician Bills: An Unwelcome Surprise," New England Journal of Medicine 375, 2016
- Phillip Tseng et al., "Administrative Costs Associated With Physician Billing and Insurance-Related Activities at an Academic Health Care System," JAMA 319(7), 2018
- CMS, Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), 1986
- American Hospital Association, statement to the House Committee on Ways and Means on health care price transparency, May 16, 2023
- James C. Robinson and Timothy T. Brown, "Increases In Consumer Cost Sharing Redirect Patient Volumes And Reduce Hospital Prices For Orthopedic Surgery," Health Affairs 32(8), 2013 (CalPERS reference pricing)
Where prices exist, and what it costs
- Maryland Health Services Cost Review Commission, all-payer hospital rate setting
- CMS Innovation Center, States Advancing All-Payer Health Equity Approaches and Development (AHEAD) Model
- Maryland Matters, "Top officials leave hospital rate-setting commission amid AHEAD model transition," August 3, 2026
- Health and Global Policy Institute, Japan Health Policy NOW, "The Medical Service Fee System" (the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare fee schedule)
- Michael K. Gusmano, Miriam Laugesen, Victor G. Rodwin and Lawrence D. Brown, "Getting The Price Right: How Some Countries Control Spending In A Fee-For-Service System," Health Affairs 39(11), 2020
- InEK (Institut für das Entgeltsystem im Krankenhaus), aG-DRG Fallpauschalen-Katalog, Germany
- Singapore Ministry of Health, hospital bills and fee benchmarks; "New Fee Benchmarks for Private Healthcare Sector," June 14, 2023
- CMS Office of the Actuary, National Health Expenditure Accounts, 2024, released January 2026; Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker, "How has U.S. spending on healthcare changed over time?"
- Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker, "The burden of medical debt in the United States," from the Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation
- David U. Himmelstein et al., "Medical Bankruptcy in the United States, 2007," American Journal of Medicine 122(8), 2009; David A. Dranove and Michael L. Millenson, "Medical Bankruptcy: Myth Versus Fact," Health Affairs, 2006; Carlos Dobkin et al., "Myth and Measurement: The Case of Medical Bankruptcies," New England Journal of Medicine 378, 2018
- American Hospital Association, Fast Facts on U.S. Hospitals, 2025
Map data
- U.S. states outline, "Blank US Map (states only)," Heitordp, Wikimedia Commons, CC0
- World map, "BlankMap-World.svg," Wikimedia Commons, public domain
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Credits
- Archival photographsPresident Lyndon B. Johnson signs the Medicare bill with Harry S. Truman, July 30, 1965, National Archives, public domain. President Ronald Reagan signs the Social Security Amendments of 1983, April 20, 1983, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, public domain.
- Aerial imageryGoogle Earth: Austin, Texas; Stamford, Connecticut; the University of Kansas Hospital, Kansas City, Kansas; the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse, Washington, D.C.; and Baltimore, Maryland.
- Stock footageStoryblocks, under licence: hospital, emergency room, ambulance, surgery, billing, courtroom, Washington, data-center, city and currency footage.
- MusicYouTube Audio Library: "Impossible Sacrifice," "Wandering Soul," "Forest Lullabye," "Across Seas" and "Lament Of The Ancients," Asher Fulero; "Things I Could Have Said," Adam MacDougall; "On The Flip" and "Drop Of A Hat," The Grey Room / Density & Time; "Aether," Density & Time; "Chase Waves," Karneef.
- SoundTitle and end-card sting, tuesdaynight; heart-rate monitor, ambulance siren, click and pop; tick, soundshelfstudio; paper slide, oxidvideos; whoosh and cash register, Dragon Studio; riser, u1pruylktlg; gavel, IntrepidMedia; office phone ring, freesound_community; typing, sarthakraj_308 (Pixabay). Stamp, marker and camera-shutter sounds, Freesound (44189, 6789, 6305). Page turns, YouTube Audio Library.