Price Transparency is Already Working to Fix Health Care

Just not the way most people think. And without breaking the internet.

Your humble correspondent, calling on Jesus and Mary in making sense of the Inova Health System (Fairfax, VA) price “transparency” data.

Remember how my last post somewhat brashly asserted that the Trump price transparency policy — taking on secret prices in health care — was already working better than expected?

I know what some of you were thinking — especially those of you who work in the health care space.

“Has she even SEEN those stupid machine-readable files the hospitals and carriers post? They’re unusable garbage! Price transparency is a joke!”

Fair enough! That’s certainly what everyone said would happen back in the day when we were fighting with industry, academics, and yes, my naysaying colleagues in the first Trump administration.

Why Hospitals Said Price Transparency Would Crash Their Websites (LOL)

The hospitals, like many others, argued that price information was all SO darned complex that:

• It would be impossible to decipher even if it were public,

• If deciphered, it would be im…