we see the same markup and discount game in medicine. Hospital charges are notoriously inflated—and hard to pin to any actual costs. Each insurance company negotiates a different discount, which varies depending on who has the leverage. The result is that insured patients don’t pay full price, unless their insurance carrier doesn’t have a contract. Then they’re “out-of-network” and face whatever the hospital decides to charge. The only difference between the game in car sales and health care is the size of the margin.
