There’s movement to make health care prices transparent in the United States.
Price Transparency in Health Care Is Coming to the U.S. — But Will It Matter?
President Trump has instructed federal agencies to use their authority (established in part under provisions of the Affordable Care Act, which the administration regards as unconstitutional) to develop federal rules requiring disclosure of hospital prices in consumer-friendly, electronic form. This would include not just the list prices that hospitals purport to charge but the actual, negotiated, discounted prices that hospitals agree upon with insurers. These negotiated fees have been treated in the past as tightly guarded trade secrets by hospitals and health plans. Equally important, the Congress is acting. In bipartisan legislation voted out of the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee on June 26, the Congress would outlaw so-called “gag clauses” that forbid the parties to price negotiations from revealing those fees. The legislation would also establish a new non-profit entity that collects de-identified claims data with actual prices paid for services nationwide. There’s no question that the tectonic plates of public policy are shifting on the issue of price transparency. The question then is: Will price transparency lower health care costs? Economic theory and hospital opposition suggest it would, but the answer is not as straightforward as you might expect and could differ from market to market. Health care is a really strange economic sector, and it doesn’t always follow the usual rules.