Hospitals Noncompliant with Price Transparency

[Chartreuse Wombat]

Early Hospital Compliance With Federal Requirements for Price Transparency

This cross-sectional study assesses compliance within a random sample of hospitals with a federal rule requiring hospitals to disclose the prices they negotiate with insurers.

jamanetwork.com

Will the government have the temerity to call out these gangsters? I doubt it

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[Gfunk6]

LOL

However, compliance could be limited because the penalties for noncompliance are minimal (maximum $300 per day) and the costs of disclosure potentially great.

 

[Lamount]

If you just graduated from business school with your shiny new MBA and find yourself running a hospital, why would you opt to risk compromising a huge revenue stream by revealing your price list when you could just keep it secret for a nominal fine? For the biggest over-chargers, there is no incentive to comply... I am sure that this was known when the policy was crafted.

 

[Gfunk6]

In fact, you can kill two birds with one stone. Pay the fine and then cut out the food in the physician's lounge and blame it on increased costs.

 

[Chartreuse Wombat]

Biden administration seeks higher penalties for hospitals that don’t publish prices

The Biden administration is proposing to increase the penalty for hospitals that don’t comply with a federal rule requiring them to publicly post the prices of their procedures. A propos…

thehill.com

Increasing to $2M is chump change rounding error for these hospitals that generate revenues in the billions

 

[ramsesthenice]

It’s a win for the government too. They can say they tried and collect some revenue as well.

They can’t pass a penalty large enough to force large systems into submission. I mean, you could try to pass legislation that holds quarterly or even biannual Medicare reimbursements for services rendered until compliance is demonstrated. But that would be a lot of work. There would be loopholes. You would have to deal with special interests. And you know in the end whatever makes it out probably wouldn’t have much more teeth than what you started with. Man, sitting back and collecting fines is looking pretty good right now…