A little-discussed but transformative patient protection policy put into place by the Trump administration is proving to be an extremely effective tool in unwinding the tangled mess of American medical pricing. Under the orders, hospitals must provide the federal government with records on all the prices they negotiate with private insurers.

Some hospitals banded together to sue the administration (they lost…twice), and the insurers’ trade association wrote a 57-page letter to the government calling the Transparency Rule “unconstitutional” and insinuating that too much transparency would not be helpful to the average health consumer. //

When The New York Times decided to take a deep dive into just what compliance with the policy was revealing, they discovered there may be good reason for medical power brokers to keep their pricing systems hidden from the public eye.

But data from the hospitals that have complied hints at why the powerful industries wanted this information to remain hidden.

It shows hospitals are charging patients wildly different amounts for the same basic services: procedures as simple as an X-ray or a pregnancy test.

And it provides numerous examples of major health insurers — some of the world’s largest companies, with billions in annual profits — negotiating surprisingly unfavorable rates for their customers. In many cases, insured patients are getting prices that are higher than they would if they pretended to have no coverage at all.

As an example, NYT went on to list the comparative costs of a standard colonoscopy at the Mississippi Medical Center: $1463 with a Cigna plan, $2144 with Aetna, and a stunning $782 with no insurance at all.

Naturally, those who follow the logic of free markets understand that subsidies always increase cost.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/08/22/upshot/hospital-prices.html?smid=tw-share