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November 23, 2010 at 07:00 PM
Value hunters should skip angioplasties in the United States and go for the cataract surgery instead.
The International Federation of Health Plans, San Francisco, has published a report comparing the cost of medical procedures, and bundles of medical services, in the United States with the cost of comparable services in other wealthy countries.
The federation found, for example, that the average amount health plans actually pay for an abdominal CT scan is $536; the cost of that service ranges from $61 to $487 in the other 10 countries 
compared for that indicator.
The U.S. abdominal CT scan providers in the top 5% in terms of cost charge $1,564 or more for a scan – or about 25 times what an abdominal CT scan costs in Canada.
But the cheapest U.S. abdominal CT scan provider charges just $164, and that price is lower than the scan prices charged in France, the United Kingdom, Chile, Germany, Switzerland, New Zealand and Australia, the federation says.
When the federation compared physician fees for cataract surgery, it found that
