Health care pricing has been likened to shopping blindfolded in a department store, and then months later receiving an indecipherable statement with a framed box at the bottom that says: Pay this amount.

Indeed, here in New Mexico it is easier to find information about the price and quality of a toaster than of a common medical procedure. Because information about price and quality is essential to almost every market transaction, this lack of transparency means that health care is more expensive than it would otherwise be.

The high cost of health care has devastating consequences. Over 62 percent of personal bankruptcies in the U.S. are attributable to illness and health care debt, up from 8 percent in 1981. Many of these medical debtors are middle-class homeowners, and more than three-quarters of them have health insurance.

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