Increasing Price Transparency in Health Care

Price transparency is one strategy that policymakers have proposed to help consumers identify and select lower-priced health care providers and services, but use of price transparency websites remains low. This report examines current price transparency efforts and their features, describes barriers to more widespread availability and use of price information, and discusses possible ways to overcome those barriers.

RAND researchers, together with the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, convened a panel of experts on price transparency to discuss these issues. Six key themes emerged: (1) Consumers are not often shopping before receiving services, (2) price information is difficult to access during services; (3) price transparency information can be misleading or inaccurate; (4) organizations lack common definitions, standards, and methodologies for sharing price data; (5) increasing the number of state all-payer claims databases may improve stakeholder access to price information; and (6) legal and regulatory barriers prevent the sharing of price data. The panel suggested a number of ways that the federal government could promote the availability and use of price information for stakeholders.