Click here to see the SAS code.
Click here to see the example.

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Since I live in the state of North Carolina, I was very interested
in seeing the NC hospitals' data. Therefore I created a plot for
each NC hospital (using a 'by' statement) and plotted the 
"average charge" versus "average payment" in a scatter plot.

If the charge & payment are equal (ie, the way it should be)
then the values fall along the diagonal line. The farther to 
the left of the diagonal line, the more "unrealistic" the 
the amount the hospital is trying to charge the customers.

Why do some hospitals try to charge so much more than 
what is eventually paid? Are they doing this to "game" 
the system?

(Note: I wanted all these plots to be to the same scale, for 
easy comparison, therefore I cut off the axes at $150k ...
therefore the few procedures >$150k are not shown.)


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