> I'd imagine hospitals hate this. Not as much as you might think. The biggest beneficiary of price opacity is, actually Medicare itself. Because prices are o

> I'd imagine hospitals hate this. Not as much as you might think. The biggest beneficiary of price opacity is, actually Medicare itself. Because prices are opaque, and because it's illegal to charge private insurers less than what you charge Medicare, and because Medicare has no legal mandate to reimburse COGS, Medicare is able to use the lack of price transparency to force providers to pass Medicare costs on to private insurers (which then gets passed on to privately-insured patients in the form of premiums). A rather cynical - but wholly plausible - view of this news is that it's an attempt to undermine the long-term financial solvency of Medicare, by making it harder for them (in the long run) to pad their operating budget this way. Given that the press release heavily emphasizes the role of the current administration in making this change[0], and that the entire party has pretty consistently supported cutting funding for Medicare[2], it's a rather easy conclusion to come to. [0] It's not exactly unusual to mention the President by name in a press release of this nature, but it's not exactly typical or standard practice either. Oftentimes, agencies will refer to themselves as if they were politically neutral and functioning somewhat independently of the executive branch[1], even though the leadership is obviously appointed by the executive. [1] Because, to a large degree, they are - the people employed by these agencies have relatively low turnover, unlike the directors who are appointed fresh by each new administration. [2] Not in their rhetoric, of course, but with their actions