This is made possible thanks to the current administration’s CMS price transparency rule which went into effect Jan 1,2021 http://www.cms.gov/hospital-price-transparency Edit: By “current” I mean the Trump administration.
Out of curiosity, how much will this reduce the cost of health care? The idea, as it's been explained to me, is that visibility into the cost of medical care will result in downward price pressure. How much?
There will be several 2nd order effects, where the overall impact is unknown: 1. The transparency rule not only reveals prices to consumers, but also to other insurance companies and other hospitals. Since these price arrangements were until now secret, that will impact negotiations between payors and hospitals in competitive markets like major cities. This is likely to force outliers on both the cheap end and expensive end to bring their rates closer to market. If either hospital or the insurer cannot bring their rates closer to market, this may accelerate consolidation of hospitals to improve negotiating power, and/or cause smaller insurers to drop hospitals from their network. This may give some room to relief to small practices that were formerly in danger of losing payor "network" access; at least while the big coverage fights happen upstream between hospitals and payors.
2. the transparency list is not comprehensive. So, not all medical services are shoppable (i.e. scheduled in advance, typically non life-threatening), this may cause hospitals to shift costs to services that consumers have no control over, meaning (1) emergency and (2) unlisted procedures. It will take a few years for hospitals to understand the impact the rule has on their bottom line. The implication is that there will be a waterfall of margin pressure on scheduled procedures at independent doctors , but it will take time to happen.