Hospitals are incentivized to over prescribe treatment and/or inflate prices. Insurances companies have a limit in the profit margin they can make, so it’s more lucrative for them to pay for an expensive surgery than a preventative measure low cost measure. Not saying that this is what happens all the time, but the incentives are screwed up. The fact that you can’t call a hospital and get a straight answer on how much a procedure costs tells you everything. Crowdhealth is trying to fix this by changing the incentives, so that’s something to be optimistic about.