Employers lobby to keep health care prices transparent in hopes of containing costs
NPREmployers lobby to keep health care prices transparent in hopes of containing costs toggle caption Zach Gibson/Getty Images It seems simple: Require hospitals and insurers to post their negotiated prices for most health care services and — bingo — competition follows, yielding lower costs for consumers. Employers are using transparency data to try to slow growth of their health care costs, and "the last thing you want to do is start over," said James Gelfand, president and CEO of the ERISA Industry Committee, which represents large employers who finance their own health plans. For consumers, hospitals must also provide a list of 300 "shoppable" services, including bundled prices accepted for common services such as having a baby or getting a hip replacement. Sponsor Message It's a massive and often confusing amount of data that has drawn interest from researchers and commercial outlets like Turquoise Health, which has sought to organize the information to better help ordinary consumers shopping for medical services or employers overseeing workers' health plans.
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