Medicare will require hospitals to post prices online
I really like this push towards transparency but hopefully people who use the data &#x2F; develop will make sure to understand the system and the data they&#x27;re dealing with. Like list prices are often incredibly far removed from the actual dollars paid, and the actual amount paid is all dependent on insurer contracts<p>I&#x27;d imagine hospitals hate this. Many of them are paranoid at what will happen if there is more transparency -- there&#x27;s a union fighting Stanford hospital now and playing radio ads about high infection rates at Stanford. Other hospitals are worried about whether similar things could happen to them -- and hold their data tight to make sure no one has ammunition to do similar things. Hospitals in many cases market based on brand value rather than quality. In a closed world, hospitals can define quality any way they want. Everyone is #1 in something. If there&#x27;s an objective standard for quality based on integrated data from hospitals nationwide, many brands will be tarnished. I&#x27;d be interested to see how hospitals respond to this push towards openness