Health economist here. I’m not convinced it will cause prices to decline at all. Under some circumstances it could cause them to rise (“insurer X gets how muc

Health economist here. I’m not convinced it will cause prices to decline at all. Under some circumstances it could cause them to rise (“insurer X gets how much? We want the same.” -insurer Y). It’s going to depend on the distribution of bargaining and market power among hospitals (which have aggregated into powerful systems) and insurers (which don’t seem to get all that much pushback about prices from the large firms they act for). I could be wrong but I expect the effect to at best very small. More likely around zero. Worst case it raises prices. Though I do like the policy myself bc I am interested in these prices for research purposes.