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Price transparency is Key to a Functional Health-Care Market

Sep 2019
Dan

The Hill argues that we do not currently have a true marketplace for health care due to the lack of information available to patients. The lack of transparency in pricing leads patients to have to suffer through the pain of over paying and surprise billing. Patients need to be informed about their options in order to feel empowered to make decisions for their own health. Medxoom can help health plan members with modern marketplace technologies to compare medical services for price and quality before getting treatment.

From The Hill:

“Notably, there is little information available about how much treatments and services cost. In other words, there’s no price transparency. Americans notice this when they struggle to get information about their own health-care costs. They’re frustrated and harmed by surprise bills and exorbitant charges. Almost none of the characteristics of a healthy market are present.

If we could reform today’s over-regulated and opaque health-care model so that people actually feel empowered to shop and make informed decisions about their health-care treatment, we might have a chance at making the case that a true health-care marketplace will better serve Americans than a government monopoly (i.e. a single-payer system) would. We could also make health care less frustrating, more affordable and more accessible for all.

But much of health care is not urgent; it’s expected. It’s something we can plan for. In a forthcoming book, “The Price We Pay,” health-care expert Marty Makaray, M.D., says 60 percent of health care is “shoppable.” For those services and treatments, we ought to be able to get more price information and we ought to have control over more of our dollars.”

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