On Feb. 25, President Trump issued an executive order to “fulfill the promise of radical transparency” in health care. His directives include requiring the disclosure of actual prices (not estimates) of health-care services, delivering updated guidance to ensure pricing information is standardized across hospitals, and issuing proposed regulatory action updating enforcement policies.
At face value, this executive order is a step in the right direction to fix the notoriously opaque health-care system in the United States. Health-care transparency sounds great: prices out in the open, patients picking the best deal like it’s Black Friday. Rigorous enforcement of price transparency requirements should absolutely help enable Americans to make more informed decisions about their health events. While the Trump administration’s efforts to solve this issue are commendable, here’s the inconvenient truth: Transparency is worthless unless people have a real reason to care about lower prices and are in a position to shop for prices.
