Greenville Reporter

Recent reports reveal that Surgeon Wade Naziri has started offering his patients transparent, cash-based prices when they visit his surgery center. 

This comes amid reports of health care suffering rising costs and hidden prices.

Naziri began fighting rising costs and hidden fees to be as transparent as possible, according to the Carolina Journal. He started working on the plan because his patients couldn’t afford weight loss emergency surgery at the local hospital in Greenville. Naziri said the Greenville Hospital charged one of his patients $54,000.

So, Naziri founded Southern Surgical Center. The website states "to give you quality care at a fraction of the cost." At the center, Naziri only charges $12,000 for the same surgery where the hospital charges $54.000. According to Naziri, this is a cash-based price he posts online. For example, he posts that a Gastric Band Removal is only $5.000. That is a big price difference then if patients were to go straight to the Greenville Hospital. 

By using this new program, Naziri’s patients know what they will pay relative to other health care systems.

Price transparency is President Donald Trump's go-to answer for Medicare for all. Naziri said the program helps patients who are paying out-of-pocket. These are the patients who can't afford insurance. So, Naziri and his partners chose to eliminate the middleman. By doing this, the patient pays the same amount with or without insurance.

“They’ll accept a lower number, but they don’t offer that to the consumer who doesn’t have leverage,” Naziri said. “We’d have patients come in who wanted surgery but didn’t have insurance and couldn’t afford it. So they were going overseas. We started thinking that perhaps we could do this here."

The price chart lists gallbladder surgery. The price of this surgery can cost as much as $64,189. Naziri’s center only charges $7,500. That price includes anesthesia and facility fees.