Consumer Confidential: Love a mystery? Read your medical bill

California enacted a law last year to prevent surprise medical bills resulting from patients inadvertently being seen by out-of-network health care providers. That's a good thing.

Yet the state apparently has no problem with an equally pernicious aspect of our medical system - hospital and doctor bills that are simply impossible to understand.

You know what I'm talking about. Numerical codes instead of descriptions of treatments. Abbreviations that only a cryptologist can decipher. A lack of any plain-English explanation of why a charge is so high.

Worse, the initial bill might include only the vaguest of hints as to what you're being charged for. Patients typically have to go to the trouble of requesting an