WiseOne wrote: ↑Fri Nov 15, 2019 11:10 am
. . .I don't know really how this would enable patients to "comparison shop" when they're limited by their insurance plan to a small network of hospitals & doctors. Not to mention the layer of insurance between patients and the bills they pay.
I'm going to stay optimistic. First, the astronomical deductibles attached to many insurance plans (many in the area of $6,000 per year) make a large segment of the "insured" population essentially uninsured when it comes to all but the most catastrophic stuff. When these people realize that they are, in a very direct way, subsidizing those of their neighbors who have employer-paid insurance (or those who rely upon Medicare or Medicaid), they'll undoubtedly be clamoring for the same discounted price offered to their peers. And what is your doctor going to say to that? "I'm sorry, charging you full price is the only way we can afford to offer discounts to our preferred patients?"
Second, it's my understanding that the fiction of "full price" is a tax avoidance strategy that allows providers to artificially inflate their "customary" prices and then offer (illusory) discounts to those patients who pay out of pocket--discounts that become bogus charity write-offs at tax time. (This, of course, works only so long as you can convince everybody (wink, wink) that somebody is actually paying the undiscounted price.) All that's likely to be coming to an abrupt halt.
Third, the transparency itself is likely to cause a change of behavior on the part of the entire health care cabal, who will, I assume, be averse to having their dirty laundry hung out in the sunshine for all to see. Isolated anecdotes about $20 aspirin tablets are quickly forgotten, but an industry-wide conspiracy to extract as much as possible from people who have no realistic choice but to submit to their extortive terms starts looking to your Average Joe like the flat-out racketeering it is.
Finally, this is likely to be just the beginning. I see the next logical step on the part of the administration being the adoption of regulations that preclude disparate pricing and that require reasonable up-front disclosure.