This is a little different article for us this week. Instead of going over a specific health related topic, I want to go over what this new hospital requirement to post their pricing to the public means to us.
In theory this should be a good thing. Hospitals are being forced to finally disclose to the public what they charge for specific procedures and diagnosis. We should be excited that we can now peer inside the world of hospital billing that for so many years has been secretive and closed off.
The excitement, however, has quickly faded into frustration and disappointment. So who deserves the credit for the new transparency requirement in hospital charges? Obama? Trump? The answer is they both do. When the affordable care act or Obamacare, as people like to call it, was passed it came with a provision that would require hospitals to disclose their charges to patients. “Each hospital operating within the United States shall for each year establish (and update) and make public (in accordance with guidelines developed by the secretary) a list of the hospital’s standard charges for items and services provided by the hospital.”
