At the beginning of 2019, the Trump Administration revived the conversation around hospital price transparency with a new rule requiring hospitals to make their standard base prices for care or services — chargemaster prices — public. In the months since, there has been discussion of going further by requiring hospitals to disclose their negotiated rates with health plans. Facing increased public scrutiny on the rising costs of drug prices, the pharmaceutical industry and pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, have also been a central target of the conversation.

As Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar recently commented at the National Business Group on Health's annual conference, these efforts are about making costs as transparent as possible to promote competition among the available health plan options.

Recommended For You

Complete your profile to continue reading and get FREE access to BenefitsPRO, part of your ALM digital membership.

Your access to unlimited BenefitsPRO content isn’t changing.
Once you are an ALM digital member, you’ll receive:

  • Breaking benefits news and analysis, on-site and via our newsletters and custom alerts
  • Educational webcasts, white papers, and ebooks from industry thought leaders
  • Critical converage of the property casualty insurance and financial advisory markets on our other ALM sites, PropertyCasualty360 and ThinkAdvisor