The Patriot Post® · Trump: Transparency Will Lower Health Care Costs

One of the most maddening aspects of health care is just how difficult it can be to determine the cost of care up front. With little recourse for knowing the price before the care is provided, it’s like purchasing a service almost entirely in the dark. Imagine if a restaurant worked this way: A costumer comes in and makes an order and asks the cost, only to have the server respond, “You’ll find out when you get the bill.” Clearly, such an establishment would struggle to stay in business.

Well, President Donald Trump wants to change that. On Tuesday, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released proposed regulations that would require hospitals to provide a list of standard prices online. This would be a significant change from current regulation, which only requires that standard prices be made available “in some form.” As Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar explained, “This payment proposal takes important steps toward a Medicare system that puts patients in charge of their care and allows them to receive the quality and price information needed to drive competition and increase value.”

CMS is also looking for ways to address surprise billing by health care providers and seeking comments on how to provide patients with better information up front about out-of-pocket costs. It’s all part of HHS’s efforts to encourage “further transparency” from health care providers — efforts that should also help lower costs by increasing competition in an oddly secretive industry.