joe fifer: this is a big ship that we're turning as an industry. sharyl: joe fifer is ceo of the healthcare financial management association, which represents many hospital finance hospitals that we called, 14 of them we were actuallunable to get a final price. executives. joe: i don't defend the fact at it's very dififcult for patients to navigate their way through this. that is something that we need to fix. we know we need to fix that as an industry. sharyl: he says what makes it so hard is the complex system set up by the government and insurers using thousands of arcane codes with different fees depending on who's paying the bill -- private insurance,he government, or y y. joe: almost all of these codes have dollars associated with them that are on these charge masters. they really become a part of a calculation to a different payment methodology. sharyl: so you kind of lost me. joe: i'm sure i did. one good analogy is if you ever lookokt the charge stickerer that's on the back of the door, it's usually some charge that's significantly higher