health care pricing

If you’re pregnant and live in Cleveland, Ohio, it’s likely you’ll pay about $522 for an ultrasound. If you live about 60 miles south in Canton, Ohio, it costs about $183 for the same procedure, a recent study found. Why such a significant price difference? Researchers couldn’t single out one overriding factor. But the study does tell us this: place matters when it comes to how much you pay for health care. The study was published last week in Health Affairs and was based on data from the Health Care Cost Institute, a commercial claims database that includes nearly 3 billion paid claim lines…