Price Transparency In Healthcare

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Primary goals of healthcare reform include the core principles of reducing healthcare spending and providing a cost-effective, high-quality care. Improving healthcare price transparency is a key piece to this puzzle in the form of tools that allow consumers to compare prices for healthcare services among multiple providers. However, current legislation and healthcare practices are lacking in the areas of price transparency. Will 2017 be the year greater transparency in healthcare costs is achieved? We review recent news affecting this area of healthcare and examine strides being taken in the direction of clear costs ahead.

(Shutterstock Image ID=178686758... Caption: Will 2017 be the year the healthcare industry makes major strides towards …show more content…
Both the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, and the American Health Care Act that was recently proposed by Republican leaders in congress, provide little provision or reform to address the ongoing concern of improving pricing transparency for medical services.

According to a recent article in Chicago Business, this is "a fundamental flaw that impedes any effort to bring market discipline to a wildly inefficient industry." The author, Joe Cahill, goes on to explain that price transparency is an essential element to bring forth consumer choice, which is at the core for all healthcare reformers. Cahill continues. "Meaningful choice in purchasing any product or service requires complete information about features, quality and price. Try getting that kind of information before buying your next medical procedure."

Is Price Transparency be the Key to Cutting Healthcare …show more content…
This tool is a solution to help consumers discern what a medical procedure will cost before receiving it. Not only does the tool provide the pricing information for the Nashville and surrounding areas, it also gives hospital rankings and links to other provider websites that allow customers to see for themselves how they compare on price and quality.

Do Pricing Estimation Tools Lower Healthcare Spending?

Some say yes. In theory, offering patients price transparency tools will save money for patients, level price variations among providers, and lower healthcare costs. In the past decade, many tools have been launched by insurers, employers, states, hospitals, and not-for-profit organization with varied success.

Health Data Management compares results in their recent article and report that the success will vary greatly depending on the engagement approach and the tool being used. The article states, "Among disappointing findings, only 3.5 percent of eligible Aetna members used the insurer’s member payment estimator between 2011 and 2012, according to a 2016 Health Affairs study. Meanwhile, as described in a 2016 JAMA study, healthcare spending rose among employees given access to a pricing
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