Hospital price transparency: who's been fooling whom?

Who’s been fooling who on hospital price transparency?

Hospitals have been required to post machine-readable pricing files since 2021. CMS has done nearly 5,200 compliance reviews. They’ve sent over 2,200 warning notices.

They’ve issued 27 civil monetary penalties.

Twenty-seven.

Good news for anyone who wants this to work: the joke may finally be over.

Today is the enforcement date for the new hospital price transparency requirements. The upgraded rules require actual median allowed amounts pulled from remittance data. No more estimates or placeholders. No more 999999999’s. Oh, and the name of a responsible executive.

Real numbers that a plan sponsor could actually use to evaluate what they’re paying.

The administration has been explicit about enforcement. Recent penalties have been in the six figures. The grace period ended.

Price transparency was always the law. The data just wasn’t reliable enough to act on.

Now it’s supposed to be.

No fooling.