With healthcare costs projected to hit $6 trillion by 2026, a pair of bipartisan bills in Congress aim to force price transparency across the U.S. healthcare system — a move advocates say could save Americans more than $1 trillion annually and boost wages for working families.
The Senate’s Patients Deserve Price Tags Act and the House’s Health DATA Act would require upfront prices for medical services, including discounted cash rates and insurance-negotiated rates. Supporters say the legislation is Congress’s top bipartisan healthcare priority.
A costly and opaque status quo
According to a medical journal report, 25% of healthcare spending is waste — stemming from administrative complexity, overcharges, and fraud. With national health expenditures reaching nearly 20% of GDP, Americans are working one day in every five to pay for healthcare, and employer-provided health benefits are expected to rise 8% in 2027, more than double the rate of inflation.
The lack of price transparency has allowed routine price gouging and tenfold price variations for identical services, according to a recent analysis by Cynthia A. Fisher, founder of PatientRightsAdvocate.org, and Arthur B. Laffer, founder of Laffer Associates. Fraud and spread pricing thrive in the dark, they argue.
Fisher and Laffer point to examples like a hernia surgery costing $23,000 in one place and $2,900 in another, or an MRI ranging from $3,000 to $300 — differences that would be impossible in a functional, competitive market.
Potential economic benefits
By creating a transparent marketplace, employers and unions — which provide coverage for most Americans — could steer employees to more cost-effective care. This would allow them to verify bills against agreed-upon prices before payment, stopping overcharges, errors, and fraud.
Brown University health economists Christopher Whaley and Daniel Arnold estimate the price transparency bills would generate $38 billion in higher wages per year. That translates to an average of $1,600 per family of four covered by an employer-sponsored health plan.
“For decades, workers’ wages have been suppressed by rapidly rising health plan premiums,” Fisher and Laffer write. “As a result, the true cost of healthcare to the American worker and economy has been obscured.”
Health outcomes and hope
Despite spending far more than other developed nations, the U.S. has a lower life expectancy. A recent survey found that 92% of Americans delay or abandon care because of costs. Price transparency could help change that by providing financial certainty at known prices, allowing patients to seek care when they need it.
“With financial certainty at known prices, consumers can get the care they need when they need it,” the advocates note. Competition would likely also improve quality of care.
Fisher and Laffer urge Congress to pass the legislation when it returns from summer recess, arguing that the overcharging horror stories experienced by nearly every American should motivate lawmakers to act.
Source: www.dailywire.com — https://www.dailywire.com/news/how-price-transparency-can-save-american-healthcare