The following letter is one of more than two thousand public comments submitted about a June 2019 presidential executive order proposing rules to promote price transparency in healthcare. Every comment is publicly available at Regulations.gov.
Secretary Azar and Administrator Verma,
Thank you for acknowledging the need for the American public to see the price of their care prior to receiving care.
Price transparency is critical to our citizens, employers, and government to reverse the trend of ever-increasing healthcare costs. Can you imagine going to a grocery store and not knowing the price of an apple until you get the bill, weeks or months after you’ve eaten it? We as patients deserve to know the REAL price—not an estimate or average—prior to care. We should be able to easily search for it online across providers, insurers, and even cash prices. This rule should apply to all providers, labs, devices, drugs, etc.—not just hospitals. I also urge you to enact a strict penalty for non-compliance. $300/day is nothing to a hospital who can pay its executives’ salaries in the millions!
Additionally, I urge you to make both price AND clinical information available to patients in real-time via open, standard APIs. I should be able to export my complete electronic record whenever I want, and the EHI export should not be limited to only certain sections of my record.
I manage the care for myself, my two children, my husband, my aging parents, and a couple friends. In every other facet of our lives, it is easy to access our data, including prices, and share them with whomever we please. Thank you for acknowledging that the system is broken. Transparency is the answer, and through finalizing these rules requiring real price transparency enforced by strict penalties, you can fix the broken system.
Thank you,
Linda
Source: Linda. 2019. Public comment regarding “Centers for Medicare Medicaid Services (CMS) Proposed Rule: Transparency in Coverage CMS-9915-P OFR Display.” Regulations.gov. Published December 9. www.regulations.gov/document?D=CMS-2019-0163-0009.