Inside the White House War Over Ending Secret Health Care Prices

The first-hand play-by-play of how price transparency almost died in the cradle

Rejoicing a bit prematurely on the day the U.S. House passed the soon-to-be doomed ACA repeal-and-replace bill.

Price transparency is working. Not how most people expected. Better actually.

But I’ll have much more to say about that soon.

In the meantime, let me explain how it all kicked off with this price transparency business.

Back in the day, there were only a few supporters for ending secret health care prices inside the first Trump administration.

And I mean a VERY few (like count-on-one-hand few).

My first boss in the White House, and his boss, the president, were all in on price transparency.

They knew it was a bipartisan, 90 percent polling issue (that’s what we call #winning in politics). It also happened to be the right policy for reasons I’ll get to below. But, as it happens, my first boss abandoned me to become a fancy ambassador to… somewhere. Wherever. Not in the White House, having my back.

His successor, unfortunately, insisted that I convince a group of naysayers from …