States Fail in Pricing Transparency

Ken Broder, writing for AllGov.com, quotes a Mother Jones blogger who wrote, “Is there any other significant area of life where it’s virtually impossible to find out how much something will cost before you decide to buy?” He was writing, of course about medical procedures.

The recently released third annual “Report Card on State Price Transparency Laws” gave 45 of the 50 states an “F” for their efforts on health care. California was among the failed states. New Hampshire received the only “A”; Colorado and Maine each got a “B”; and Vermont and Virginia earned a “C”.

Broder wrote that only the Boston area had a wider disparity in pricing for hip replacement surgery than did the Los Angeles–Long Beach area. Los Angeles’s differential was 169%, followed in California by San Diego (100%), Orange County (46%), Riverside-San Bernardino (23%) and Fresno (8%).

One-third of a state’s grade consists of the availability of information on a web site. The other two-thirds, according to Broder, involve a complex review of laws and regulations that states pass to facilitate transparency of health pricing information. The report also analyzes how effectively the laws are applied.

“The phenomenon of extreme price variation in healthcare can have obvious financial consequences for individuals and employers, ” the study said, and “serious implications for the sustainability of a U.S. healthcare system.”