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MA launches a grand experiment: Pricing healthcare

WBUR CommonHealth, January 22, 2014
There's a grand experiment underway in Massachusetts and we are all, in theory, part of it. Here's the question: Can we actually list prices for childbirth, MRIs, stress tests and other medical procedures, and will patients, armed with health care prices, begin to shop around for where (and when) they "buy" care? One of the first steps in this experiment is a new requirement that hospitals and doctors tell patients who ask how much things cost. It took effect Jan. 1 as part of the state's health care cost control law and we set out to run a test.