Among the difficulties under the CMS's new price-transparency rule is the fact that the consumer will have no idea from the posted prices how his or her insurance will affect the final total. (Photo: Getty)
On January 1, a new Centers for Medicare and Medicaid rule requiring hospitals to post their prices online went into effect, but it hasn't been the price transparency silver bullet they hoped for. As many consumers are finding–and news outlets, including the New York Times, are reporting–having the prices posted doesn't mean that the data is intelligible.
The requirement calls for all hospitals to post their chargemaster prices for services online in a machine-readable format, despite concern from hospital execs that providing chargemaster prices will “confuse” consumers.
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Marlene Satter
Marlene Y. Satter has worked in and written about the financial industry for decades.
