Transparency in health care
King Henderson
Dr. Jenkins
PS 101
April 7, 2022
Transparency pertaining to Price and Quality
Cost and Transparency are two major issues that resemble a dark cloud looming over the healthcare industry. In the beginning phases of covid congress signed bills enacting some “bail-out” funds for the health care industry (hospitals). These funds amounted to nearly 275 billion dollars, in only 2 months back in 2020. This money offset insurer losses, largely with taxpayer dollars. This is only one example of large sums of money being fed into an already wealthy system. It’s time for the healthcare industry to focus on actual individuals and adjust its transparency policies.
It is a unique situation when as many people agree on a topic as they do on health care price transparency. Usually having 50 percent on your side is considered a win; but regarding this issue, almost 90 percent of Americans show their want for insurers and hospitals to disclose prices. Most people realize this is a serious topic that effects everyone in some way. Fixing price transparency can fix major problems in America’s health care industry. For example, in 2018, private health insurance companies paid out nearly $1.1 trillion, with hospital care accounting for $481 billion. With all this cash spent, there were numerous hospitals that could be seen charging varying prices for the same procedure. Thus, Americans must look at this as shopping, after all, us Americans do love shopping. This will produce the best benefits to ignite the health care system.
Price transparency is seen to lead to a boom in commerce, or rather, a boom in “shopping”. This overtime can help healthcare employers to produce payment models, maximizing value from healthcare spending. This would also help to reduce “waste” within our health care system. Over $930 billion, almost 25% of all spending was wasted. The two categories that were the highest were administrative complexity and pricing failure. If transparent prices had been accessible to patients wasted cash could have been avoided.
Another way to tackle the issue of transparency is divulging from price transparency to focus on quality transparency. From this perspective, pricing is more or less unimportant because insurance coverage handles that aspect. It is suggested by Paul B. Ginsburg that, “the impact of price transparency is significantly mitigated, barring a fundamental change to the healthcare market “(Ginsburg). However, Ginsburg suggests that quality transparency acts as a greater solution by engaging insurers and keeping patients in the loop. Making the information easy to understand by laying it all out beforehand will form better quality care and allow patients to make informed decisions. From another perspective, quality transparency can be looked at as performance transparency as well. With this point of view, levels of care can be enhanced at lower costs.
By taking these different approaches to this topic, there are seeming methods that could alleviate the given situation. But truth be told, the main ingredient for this to work is trust. The thing is though, trust is a rare commodity nowadays, especially when talking about big corporations. No one wants to be taken advantage of and be made the fool. Big health care corporations do this daily, taking advantage of customers especially. But focusing on trust is still important. Big companies and patients/people alike should begin taking steps to help bridge the gap to mend trust. It won’t happen overnight, but steps need to be taken in order for health care to be streamlined. Alas, this might be too much to ask, since almost every free thinker today is also a skeptic.
Transparency regarding cost and quality in health care has been a steady uphill battle for decades, but thankfully beginning to see some breakthroughs. Companies, corporations, and providers alike are beginning to be more open with the public about prices, not necessarily quality. Still, a step in the right direction for transparency in health care. The more the people can be informed, the more well off each individual can be, in theory. The next big step that can seal the deal, so to speak, is generating a level of trust. I suppose this won’t come until firstly success is achieved, but that is all dependent upon corporate action