Inadequate pricing transparency, despite patients paying more

Health Care Incentives Improvement Institute released a report this week grading various states on how well they enable pricing transparency within the health care markets. The result? 95% of the states failed -- that's a lot of red on page 8.

Perhaps this result is not surprising for people who have been familiar with the industry for a while. There has long been an inclination to keep prices hidden from the public for various reasons. What has been starting to shift over the last decade, however, is that patients have increasingly been asked to shoulder more and more of the health care costs. The higher costs could be in the form of higher premium contributions, higher deductibles, higher co-payments, or higher co-insurance. For example, a recent survey found that 80% of the employers who responded to the survey indicated that they have raised deductibles or are considering doing so. As patients start to directly pay more, they will start to care about prices more. Given the long-running trend of increasing prices, it seems like it will only be a matter of time before the pressure of patient interest causes government agencies to enact laws or policies for better dissemination of pricing data.