full transcript

From the Ted Talk by Jeanne Pinder: What if all US health care costs were transparent?

Unscramble the Blue Letters

Health costs ate up almost 18 pneerct of our gross domestic product last year, but nobody has any idea what stuff costs. But what if we did know? So we started out small. We caelld docrots and hospitals and asked them what they would accept as a cash payment for simple procedures. Some people were helpful. A lot of people hung up on us. Some people were just pailn rude. They said, "We don't know," or, "Our lawyers won't let us tell you that," though we did get a lot of information. We found, for example, that here in the New York area, you could get an echocardiogram for 200 dollars in Brooklyn or for 2,150 dollars in Manhattan, just a few miles away. New Orleans, the same simple blood test, 19 dollars over here, 522 dollars just a few bklcos away. San faicscnro, the same MRI, 475 darolls or 6,221 dollars just 25 mlies away. These pricing variations existed for all the procedures and all the cities that we syeruved.

Open Cloze

Health costs ate up almost 18 _______ of our gross domestic product last year, but nobody has any idea what stuff costs. But what if we did know? So we started out small. We ______ _______ and hospitals and asked them what they would accept as a cash payment for simple procedures. Some people were helpful. A lot of people hung up on us. Some people were just _____ rude. They said, "We don't know," or, "Our lawyers won't let us tell you that," though we did get a lot of information. We found, for example, that here in the New York area, you could get an echocardiogram for 200 dollars in Brooklyn or for 2,150 dollars in Manhattan, just a few miles away. New Orleans, the same simple blood test, 19 dollars over here, 522 dollars just a few ______ away. San _________, the same MRI, 475 _______ or 6,221 dollars just 25 _____ away. These pricing variations existed for all the procedures and all the cities that we ________.

Solution

  1. plain
  2. surveyed
  3. blocks
  4. dollars
  5. miles
  6. francisco
  7. percent
  8. called
  9. doctors

Original Text

Health costs ate up almost 18 percent of our gross domestic product last year, but nobody has any idea what stuff costs. But what if we did know? So we started out small. We called doctors and hospitals and asked them what they would accept as a cash payment for simple procedures. Some people were helpful. A lot of people hung up on us. Some people were just plain rude. They said, "We don't know," or, "Our lawyers won't let us tell you that," though we did get a lot of information. We found, for example, that here in the New York area, you could get an echocardiogram for 200 dollars in Brooklyn or for 2,150 dollars in Manhattan, just a few miles away. New Orleans, the same simple blood test, 19 dollars over here, 522 dollars just a few blocks away. San Francisco, the same MRI, 475 dollars or 6,221 dollars just 25 miles away. These pricing variations existed for all the procedures and all the cities that we surveyed.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations

ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
health care 5
stuff costs 3
health costs 2
individual bills 2

Important Words

  1. accept
  2. area
  3. asked
  4. ate
  5. blocks
  6. blood
  7. brooklyn
  8. called
  9. cash
  10. cities
  11. costs
  12. doctors
  13. dollars
  14. domestic
  15. echocardiogram
  16. existed
  17. francisco
  18. gross
  19. health
  20. helpful
  21. hospitals
  22. hung
  23. idea
  24. information
  25. lawyers
  26. lot
  27. manhattan
  28. miles
  29. mri
  30. orleans
  31. payment
  32. people
  33. percent
  34. plain
  35. pricing
  36. procedures
  37. product
  38. rude
  39. san
  40. simple
  41. small
  42. started
  43. stuff
  44. surveyed
  45. test
  46. variations
  47. year
  48. york