Harvard Business Review July 3, 2019
There’s movement to make health care prices transparent in the United States.
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 U.S. Congress is acting. In bipartisan legislation voted out of the Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee on June 26,...