January 30, 2019 via The Conversation –

Imagine there was a store where there were no prices on items, and you never knew what you’d pay until you’d picked out your purchases and were leaving the shop. You might be skeptical that the store would have any incentive to offer reasonable prices.

This exact situation has become the norm in U.S. health care, at least for those people who lack publicly provided health insurance. Meanwhile, American health care prices are, by many measures, the highest in the world.

Hospitals have resisted disclosing prices, leading policymakers to consider laws requiring price transparency. This issue has taken on increasing urgency, as patients face increasing out-of-pocket costs. In addition, prices vary widely across hospitals. The same lower limb MRI can cost US$700 at one hospital and $2,100 at another. This means that there are large potential savings if patients switched to less expensive options.

There was a tiny step in this direction on Jan. 1, when all hospitals in the U.S. were required to post their charge prices. However, the list of over 15,000 procedures is notoriously incomprehensible, even for medical professionals. What exactly is a “HC PTC CLOS PAT DUCT ART,” a procedure listed by one Tennessee hospital? Perhaps more importantly, patients’ out-of-pocket costs often depend on the specifics of their insurance plan and the prices that are negotiated by their insurer, meaning the listed prices do not reflect what they actually pay.

For these reasons, many researchers and commentators, including myself, believe that this approach is unlikely to have a meaningful effect on health care costs.

https://theconversation.com/what-would-happen-if-hospitals-openly-shared-their-prices-110352