October 16, 2015

High healthcare spending is widely recognized as one of the most pressing challenges facing the U.S. today. Experts have argued that healthcare price transparency could be a powerful tool for reducing prices by leveraging competition to reduce excess prices and allow a better focus on quality.

In practice, providing consumers with this type of information is more difficult than it appears. New research identifies less than 10% of all health spending is both out-of-pocket and “shoppable,” suggesting there are significant limits on the degree to which consumers can influence overall health system spending, even if they had access to thorough, accurate information on price and quality.

Nonetheless, expanding healthcare pricing transparency is an initiative that legislators and regulators around the country are eager to explore. And there’s good reason to do so—transparency has many audiences.

Adams Dudley, UCSF Center for Healthcare Value

Margo Michaels, Healthcare for All Massachusetts (HCFA)

Lynn Quincy, Healthcare Value Hub

Webinar Products

• Slide Deck

Hub Products

• Hub Research Brief: Revealing the Truth about Healthcare Price Transparency
  
• Hub: More Evidence on Transparency Initiatives
  
• Hub: More Evidence on Price Transparency
  

External Resources 

• Healthcare for All Massachusetts. Consumer Cost Transparency Report Card. (2007)
  
• Debra Beaulieu-Volk. Payment reform pushes providers to keep financial tabs on patients, Fierce Healthcare. (December 2012)
• Pioneer Institute. Survey: Price Information Difficult to Obtain From Massachusetts Hospitals. (June 2015)
• 189th General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Bill S.1048: An Act to Promote Transparency and Cost Control of Pharmaceutical Drug Prices. (April 2015)
• Healthcare for All Massachusetts. Watch the Video that Pharma Does Not Want You to See. (February 2015)