Kudos to the Trump administration on this... "A federal judge has upheld a Trump administration policy that requires hospitals and health insurers to publish their negotiated prices for health services, numbers that are typically kept secret. The policy is part of a major push by the administration to improve transparency in health care. Insurers and health providers usually negotiate deals behind closed doors, and patients rarely know the cost of services until after the fact. Administration officials said more price transparency would lead to lower and more predictable prices in an industry that has huge ranges in what insurers pay for services. A simple blood test, for example, can cost $11 or $1,000. Coronavirus tests show a similar variation, with prices from $27 to $2,315. But in a lawsuit, the American Hospital Association said the administration did not have the legal authority to require the publication of negotiated prices, arguing that the publication of the prices could have perverse effects. On Tuesday, the judge, Carl Nichols, disagreed." https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/23/upshot/hospitals-lost-price-transparency-lawsuit.html
Trump has gone out of his way to give the middle finger to a large segment of the country. The consequence is that people don’t really give a flying F about any positives he achieves. He wanted to divide the country and has. Now he reaps what he sowed. Nobody forced him to take this approach. He has to live with the consequences. Seems rather fair to me,
It sounds like a positive. The question is, what will it amount to? And of course, what's in it for Trump? There's always a catch.
It’s good by the trump admin. Hospitals and insurance companies are scum, unfortunately they’re the ones that benefited the most from Obamacare
The country is already divided. A Democrat president won’t solve anything, this is why I think we need to separate into two nations, one more right and one more left and call it a day, the United States is not United, not one bit. We separated too much and there is too much irreparable damage by the constant left vs right fighting , the left went lefter and doesn’t like the USA or it’s founders, the right is not gonna budge and meet in the middle, not that there is much of a compromise
We could have the socialist democracy of America west, socialist Democracy of America northeast and then the Republic of America ..time to sign the divorce papers and do it. Everyone gets what they want. We don’t want to live with each other so this is a way that everyone gets what they want ...you guys get a new way of governance of a utopia Chaz/ Chop and open borders with Mexico, the Republic keeps borders and fine tunes the constitution the way it is on a more right wing platform but you know we are close so we still need to at least be amicable despite differences of political thought process ..o btw great job by Trump on the price transparency issue !
I don't see this as a particularly big deal. People don't typically price shop medical services for any number of reasons. On the healthcare side, it can be incredibly tricky/annoying trying to coordinate medical care (clinical notes, labs, imaging) of patients seen at multiple different hospital's, clinic's, and imaging centers. That could have significant unintended consequences if treating healthcare professionals can't get access to prior outside medical records.
This is something that can become typical and can be used to investigate gouging and shine a light on particular companies. Don't really know about the healthcare side and the burden on them but let's just say I think they make enough money to cover all that.
It's good news i guess. Healthcare costs are headed to the moon. Someone make a health crypto to bilk people of their stimulus checks.
To a certain degree, sure. No arguments that there's some egregious, money-gouging healthcare endeavors out there. This might somewhat work with commodity-type services like laboratory studies or imaging. But even then, getting a blood test isn't like going grocery shopping. There's no barrier shopping at the new grocery store down the street advertising a sale on steaks. For a blood test, you'd have to at minimum fill out paperwork (i.e. get a medical record number/become an established patient), get the blood test pre-approved by your insurance, get the test and then have that information transferred back to your doctor. Mind you, none of that is crazy difficult or out of the ordinary but multiple it by every single healthcare encounter you have and it becomes somewhat of a logistical nightmare (which secondarily raises healthcare costs). Or you could just stay in one healthcare system and a lot of that busy work is cut down. Counter example, say you've been seeing an orthopedist for years for chronic knee pain. You finally decide on getting a knee replacement. You look up the prices for a knee replacement and find that all the cheapest options for hospitals are ones that your orthopedist doesn't have privileges at. Do you decide to forego the long-term relationship with that surgeon to go get your knee replaced at the cheaper hospital or pay more to get operated on by your surgeon at a hospital he has privileges at? Lol. "the burden is on them". Of course it's not. That's like saying a $100m fine slapped on a polluting oil company hurts the company. it doesn't. That fine gets passed onto the shareholders in the form of lower returns and the consumers in the form of higher prices. If the administrative burden (already really high) gets increased more so, that's gonna get passed back onto the healthcare consumer.
Texas is a blue state now. Hate to break it to you buddy. It’s no longer “west and northeast”. In fact Trump has actually united the country against him. You’re the minority
What you are doing is giving excuses. By revealing the cost, the market and government can start fine tuning the system. If it really costs $1000 to do a BMP through the hospital, something is seriously wrong. Many of these tests can be brought down to a fraction of a cost. You might deny it, but Musk did the same thing with space flight. He was laughed at. Now he is about to light up a global monopoly on internet.
Wasn't the mastercharge transparency (essentially establishing a menu that all hospitals have to post for all their charges) an Obamacare initiative that the Republicans fought against? Good for Trump for fighting for this.
Price transparency is a key element to Obamacare. It's a basic principle of economics. A hospital could be charging twice as much for the same procedure as a hospital next door. If Republicans fought this it wouldn't have even served their principles. Its just transparency to normalize the market. As a matter of fact they argue for market forces, knowing price makes those forces work