January 23, 2019 1:08PM # Mr. Ferguson Goes to Washington By [Michael F. Cannon](https://www.cato.org/people/michael-f-cannon) --- SHARE In the new Cato Institute book *[Overcharged: Why Americans Pay Too Much for Health Care](https://www.cato.org/overcharged)*, Cato adjunct scholars David A. Hyman and Charles Silver share stories of Americans who have been gouged by hospitals and other health care providers—Americans like Eric Ferguson: > After being bitten on the foot by a snake while taking out the garbage, Eric Ferguson went to the Lake Norman Regional Medical Center, where he was given anti-venom and monitored. The hospital’s list price for the medication was $81,000. The discounted price his insurer negotiated was about $20,000. The retail price of anti-venom online? $750. *Overcharged* explains that hospitals and pharmaceutical companies can charge such outrageous markups solely because government grants them anti-competitive monopoly powers and encourages widespread third-party payment, where nobody has an incentive to curb excessive prices. Today at 2 p.m., Ferguson will tell his story in person to President Trump and members of his cabinet at a White House roundtable on “Fair and Honest Pricing in Health Care.” While the Trump administration has admirably [required](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/21/opinion/trump-hospital-prices.html) hospitals that participate in Medicare to post prices, simply posting “chargemaster” prices won’t make a difference. Chargemaster prices are so [complicated](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/13/us/politics/hospital-prices-online.html), patients wouldn’t use them even if they were spending their own money. And when it’s someone else’s money on the line, forget it. *Overcharged* shows price transparency and price competition won’t happen until we let consumers—rather than politicians and employers—control the $3.9 trillion Americans spend on health care each year. To watch Eric Ferguson tell his story to Cato last June, [click here](https://www.cato.org/multimedia/cato-video/twice-bitten) or see the video below: ##### Related Tags [Health Care](https://www.cato.org/health-care) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).