House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health Chair Brett Guthrie (R-KY) published an opinion piece in the Washington Examination ahead of a March 28th hearing where Members will explore how transparency and competition can lower health care costs for Americans. 

Key Excerpts Below from the Washington Examiner piece titled “Empowering patients through price transparency”:

“Our country’s most formidable healthcare challenges are rooted in ever-rising healthcare costs and a lack of basic transparency. Despite our country spending more than $4 trillion a year on healthcare, or about $13,000 per person, patients are not able to make informed decisions about how and where to spend their money as they can in virtually every other industry.” 

[…] 

“Thankfully, there are bipartisan solutions to make healthcare pricing more transparent and the healthcare system easier to navigate for patients. These include the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services hospital price transparency rule and the multidepartment transparency in coverage rule, which were initially issued under then-President Donald Trump and continued by the Biden administration. These rules require hospitals to post publicly the prices of hundreds of common procedures on their website in a user-friendly format and require private health plans to disclose information about pricing and what patients are obligated to pay.” 

[…] 

“Price transparency can also provide insight on why the costs of care are rapidly increasing. Exposing prices would help show whether healthcare services are priced correctly and give policymakers a clearer look at the value, or lack thereof, of some of the many steps in the healthcare supply chain. 

“At the end of March, the Health Subcommittee will hold a hearing on healthcare affordability to examine these price transparency rules and other policies that promote more choices and drive down the costs of care for patients. 

“Congress should also consider solutions to ensure the public and its employers are getting the best possible deal on their prescription drug benefits. We should build on our bipartisan work to save our healthcare system billions of dollars and make pharmacy benefit managers be more transparent. Shining a light on these middlemen who are making prescriptions more expensive is one important step to bolster competition and allow for affordable new drugs, such as generics and biosimilars, to be made available for patients.” 

CLICK HERE to read the full piece. 

Original source can be found here.