Will Increased Health Care Price Transparency Actually Improve Care?

A pair of USA Today editorials describe competing arguments on the topic of price transparency. The USA Today Editorial Board argues that providing consumers with price information and encouraging them to use the data by comparison shopping among providers will bring down overall health care system costs. If consumers shop for the best value in health care, the very large variations seen in health care costs will be brought into greater alignment.

An opposing view by Paul Ginsburg, Ph.D., the president of the non-partisan Center for Studying Health System Change, argues that using price transparency to turn consumers into more active purchasers sounds like a good idea, but won't actually bring down overall system costs. Consumers, especially those with employer-sponsored insurance, have no real reason to comparison shop. Modest deductibles and co-payments mean that what the consumer pays does not vary by the provider used. Co-insurance, where patients pay a percentage of the cost, encourages limited price consciousness and only until out-of-pocket maximums are reached.

Because the availability of price information is still very limited, more research is needed to develop relevant measures of value that consumers can use, along with more research on behavioral economics to better understand how to best ensure consumers have a reason to use such information.