Exactly. If this knew what my insurance company had negotiated for the procedure, and I could input my policy details to figure out what my personal cost would be then I can totally see the usefulness. But as a consumer I just have no idea at all what knowing the Medicare reimbursement prices tells me.
If I assume that the relative differences that Medicare has negotiated are similar to the relative differences my insurance company has negotiated (which I'm guessing is an invalid assumption), and if I accurately know what my policy will cover vs not cover (again, a nearly impossible thing to know given how complicated these things are), then maybe you can make a decision with this data. But the system is so complicated that I don't think that works at all by just using this dataset.
Yeah, unfortunately what CMS pays for procedures bears little relation as to what private insurers pay. It all depends on the local market for the provider. If most of the population goes to only a few providers, the providers have a lot of sway in negotiations. They will often ask for (and get) per-diem rates or percentage of charge.
If the population goes to a number of different providers, then the insurance company can play hardball and say "if you don't take this rate, you're out of our network, good luck with that". In those cases, they'll negotiate an MS-DRG + X% rate.
The reason why negotiated rates with private insurers are non-public is because it's a negotiating tool. If hospital A gets paid $5K for a heart attack and finds out hospital B a block away gets paid $7K for the same thing, the next round of negotiations will be very rowdy.
If I assume that the relative differences that Medicare has negotiated are similar to the relative differences my insurance company has negotiated (which I'm guessing is an invalid assumption), and if I accurately know what my policy will cover vs not cover (again, a nearly impossible thing to know given how complicated these things are), then maybe you can make a decision with this data. But the system is so complicated that I don't think that works at all by just using this dataset.