Doctor made from Lego

Medical care is one of America’s biggest businesses, but it is different in several respects: there is little or no price comparison or price shopping done. There is very little objective review of providers, like yelp.com or zagat.com. The providers sometimes use their industry associations such as State Medical Boards to legally prevent any release of derogatory information. See the Las Vegas Sun, the Charlotte News-Observer, the Oakland Tribune, RedOrbit, and the Los Angeles Times.

But we now see an example of business principles entering this field. According to this WSJ article, American hospitals are now offering to price-match foreign hospitals. This is huge, as one of the biggest reasons for going overseas is price. Remove that incentive, no reason to leave the country.