The Downsides to Healthcare Price Transparency

Last year, more than half of working Americans reportedly checked prices for the health services they required. Surprised? This is a very new phenomenon, catalyzed by the massive shift in the economics of healthcare toward high-deductible health plans, where consumers pay the full cost of the MRI, the X-ray, the specialist visit, etc, until they hit that high deductible. Consumers have more skin in the game than ever before.

Healthcare providers and policy makers are scrambling to meet consumer demand for accurate pricing, and it’s not easy. An important meeting on the topic, the Health Care Transparency Summit, just concluded in Washington, with speakers condemning how convoluted and confusing it can be to get the information, and then how absurd the numbers look once you have them.

Read more at The Wall Street Journal: http://on.wsj.com/1xBygpI