Americans overwhelmingly favor health care price transparency: survey

Americans are nearly unanimously in favor of legally requiring health care entities like hospitals, insurance providers and doctors to disclose their prices in an easily accessible place, according to a new survey.

New polling conducted by Marist for the nonprofit Patient Rights Advocate (PRA) found that 94 percent of adults agreed that hospitals, insurance companies and doctors should "be legally required to disclose all of their prices, including discounted prices, cash prices, and insurance negotiated rates across hospitals and across plans in an easily accessible place online."

This result were statistically the same across political parties, age groups, level of education attained, income level and region in the U.S.

When asked if whether "hospitals should be required to post all actual prices in advance of planned care, not just estimates," 93 percent of participants said they agreed with the statement.

Since 2021, hospitals in the U.S. have been required to post the prices of all their services, drugs and item provided to patients in a "comprehensive machine-readable file" or through a "display of shoppable services in a consumer-friendly format."

Hospitals have been slow to comply with the rule, with a little more than a third of hospitals abiding by the rule, according to the most recent analysis conducted by the PRA in July. While most hospitals posted their prices online, the documents were found to be incomplete or unreadable.

"Hidden prices and non-binding estimates give industry profiteers power over patients, workers, and employer and union purchasers. When they’re not required to share prices in advance they can charge whatever they want — and that’s exactly what the industry is doing," the PRA said in a statement.

The PRA has launched a free online dashboard, called the Hospital Price Files Finder Tool, that compiles the available price transparency lists by state.

In the same survey by Marist, 91 percent of participants said they would shop around for the "best quality of health care at the lowest possible price" if they were able to see the prices of care. If they knew the actual cost of care, 88 percent said they would be more likely to seek routine and elective health care.

The survey was conducted Dec. 13-14 with 1,130 adults participating. The results of the survey have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.