In our Power of Price series, we’ve been exploring how the secrecy shrouding health care pricing can raise costs — the cost of the care itself and the cost to employees who get their insurance through work.
There’s a movement to make those prices more transparent. More than a dozen other states have started something called an “all-payer claims database.”
These databases track what actually gets paid for care at different hospitals by various insurers. They can be used to analyze the true cost of health care and make it public.
Last spring, Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration was denied $5 million to start one of these databases.
Julie Appleby of Kaiser Health News has been following this transparency movement. She points out revealing the prices alone isn’t always enough to change cost.
Hear a full interview with her below.
See all our Power of Price coverage at WLRN.org/price and see the Miami Herald's Power of Price series here.
