Dive Brief:
- A new analysis by the nonprofit West Health Policy Center has concluded that increased health care price transparency could play a substantial role in payment reform and help reduce costs.
- One intervention would be to require all private health plans to offer a price transparency tool to their members, offering data on out-of-pocket and total prices specific to the provider, a step which could save $18 billion over 10 years if enacted by 2019.
- Another step would be to require EMRs to provide price data to physicians ordering images and laboratory services. West estimates that this would save $27 billion during the course of a decade.
- Yet another option would be to report hospital-specific prices through state all-payer claims databases. This would reduce spending by approximately $61 billion over 10 years, the study estimates.
Dive Insight:
Making price transparency a major public policy initiative could very well have an impact on health care spending. However, it's not clear that consumers are likely to take advantage of this data, as past researchers have suggested that many consumers find it intimidating rather than helpful. Even when consumers are in high-deductible plans that force them to take on a great deal of health care spending directly, they don't necessarily use transparency tools that are available. This problem will need to be addressed if public policy initiatives like the ones outlined by West are to work.