Is Price Transparency too Wonky?

The premise of wanting to know the cost of your healthcare is a simple one. From a consumer perspective, the human tendency to search for the best deal extends towards healthcare. From an American government perspective, mandates for price transparency are supposed to increase insurer competition and “shopping” for services, driving down prices.

I have been reading Nikhil Krishnan’s newsletter, Out of Pocket, on American healthcare, and I do think one aspect I admire is the tendency to use memes and colloquial language to communicate complex concepts in a seemingly intentionally confusing system.

I perceive a major limitation in this notion of price transparency is the actual phrasing. People want to search for prices of things—how much does it cost to break an ankle? How much is a human heart worth? While we need “transparency” to achieve this goal, there is a disconnect in what this means to the consumer. Though our data comes from a government initiative for price transparency, MediFare just aims to answer simple questions.

At its core, accessibility to healthcare costing satisfies an innate human curiosity. We are all hagglers at heart and just want the right price.