Health care price transparency is that rare policy initiative that elicits support across the partisan divide in the United States. The broad political consensus behind the required disclosure of relevant pricing led administrations of both parties to issue rules through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Service (CMS) that force the medical care and insurance sectors to post online an abundance of previously hidden pricing data. It is expected that employers and other payers, with help from technology firms, will use the data to drive competition by extracting lower fees, where possible, and that health care providers will be incentivized to disclose clinical outcomes to justify continued differences in the prices they charge for their services.
How to Create a Better Consumer Market for U.S. Health Care
Measures to make prices more transparent were good steps in the drive to create more competition in health care. But they don’t do what is necessary to create a vibrant consumer market in which patients would actively shop around for the best prices. Four additional steps that would make a big difference include: (1) force care providers to specify their prices for a list of standardized, consumer-focused bundles of services tied to full episodes of clinical interventions; (2) require all providers to participate in this bundled pricing system; (3) mandate that the prices posted for these services be available to all patients, irrespective of their insurance status; and (4) ensure that consumers who select service providers that charge prices that are below what their insurance plans will pay can keep the savings.