President Donald Trump announced two regulatory changes Friday in an effort to provide more transparency in health care prices for patients.
The changes would require hospitals to display their negotiated rates to patients starting in January 2021, and make insurance companies show patients their expected out-of-pocket costs.
Medical Ethicist Arthur Caplan told Boston Public Radio on Monday that the move represents "baby steps" toward a desired goal of health care transparency, but won't fix a fundamentally broken system.
"I'm glad to see the president offer transparency, we should hope for that in many other areas of his administration. But even as it may, I still have my doubts about just what's going to happen if we release information," said Caplan. "A lot of parts of New England there are one or two dominant healthcare systems, you're in them and told if you go out of the system, you're going to pay premiums, so it's not like you can ship for the cheapest hospital, you're sort of directed by your insurance. ... It'd be hard for somebody to really shop based on price, so it's going to take more than just getting more information out about charges."
Caplan is the Drs. William F and Virginia Connolly Mitty Chair, and director of the Division of Medical Ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center.
