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Price Transparency

When insurance companies got involved in the business of selling pre-paid medical care over 60 years ago, they put themselves between the doctor and the patient. It’s at that point in time when we saw the exponential increase in healthcare costs in this country. The result is something unique in industry; consumers use services they have no responsibility of paying for and the agency paying the bill isn’t the one using the service. Put simply, the health insurance industry’s intervention into the doctor-patient relationship, coupled with governmental overreach, has resulted in most of the fundamental rules of economics being broken.

Recommendations

  • Texas has within its Insurance Code 552.003, a rule that is quite limiting to medical providers that prohibits them from providing cash pricing to those who might be uninsured, underinsured, or simply want to pay the lower cash rate. Allowing for a cash price list, will allow for greater consumerism and competitive forces.

Talking points for liberty fighters

  • Prices matter, and the more transparency there is in health care, the better for patients, providers and families.
  • In a free market, price is considered to be like the central nervous system. It responds with great immediacy to market forces, and adjusts to fluctuations in supply and demand.
  • In our current system without real pricing, patients are no longer able to decide rationally what services they want and what they’re willing to pay.

The Latest

Research