It's a good thing, and one of the very few things I will happily stand up and commend the Trump administration for. Unfortunately, the impact on private indivi

It's a good thing, and one of the very few things I will happily stand up and commend the Trump administration for. Unfortunately, the impact on private individuals is likely to be very low, because those negotiated rates are extracted from hospitals by insurance companies by sheer weight of the number of policyholders they have. You and I won't be paying those rates, nor will we be able to negotiate anywhere near them. Our starting point as individuals is something called the "chargemaster rate," which is, theoretically, what the hospital might charge Joe Schmoe who's uninsured. In practice, even chargemaster rates aren't the real rates. Despite not being a huge insurance company, it is possible to negotiate with hospitals if you're either quite rich or quite poor. On the rich side, oftentimes just saying you're going to pay cash up front will get you a substantial discount. On the other end, hospitals frequently have entire departments theoretically devoted to helping poor and indigent patients afford medical care. What those departments actually do is sign people up for government benefits, or, sometimes, just writing off entire bills. Anyway, yes, it's a good thing. No, it probably won't make a difference to you.