The consumer advocacy group Public Citizen has issued a scathing report on the state of healthcare price transparency in the United States, concluding that it is available in microscopic doses when it is available at all.
Public Citizen reports that all-claims databases are the key to achieving price transparency in healthcare, but the few that are available are either not publicly available or out-of-date. It noted that 19 states are in the midst of creating such databases, but concluded that “many of these states’ efforts include no plans to make information from the databases readily available for consumers.”
Moreover, Public Citizen said that only six states–California, Colorado, Maine, New Hampshire, Virginia, and West Virginia–have any way for consumers to compare prices on basic medical services. Prices for such services vary widely for those who have private insurance, and they are not usually available for Medicare enrollees.
The findings tend to jibe with a recently issued report by Catalyst for Payment Reform and the Health Care Incentives Improvement Institute, which gave only seven states passing grades on price transparency. Most of those states were operating an accessible all-claims payer database.
“Shopping for healthcare prices in the United States is like trying to find a light switch in the dark,” said Vijay Das, a healthcare policy advocate for Public Citizen, who conducted the study, in a statement. “If you know where you should be looking–and it’s actually there for you to find–you might have a chance, but otherwise you’ll blindly search in vain.”
Meanwhile, there has been a rising demand for price transparency in healthcare, with an online petition created by a former hospital executive receiving tens of thousands of signatures earlier this year.
- read the Public Citizen report (.pdf)
- check out the statement