[m16ghost]

This will be a good thing initially for consumers as it will allow people to comparison shop for the less complicated, non-life threatening medical treatments. It puts into place the other piece of consumer-driven healthcare[0], which is meant to put market pressure on medical services.

Note the new transparency rule only affects hospitals, so the new rule won't cover services performed at local doctor's offices or clinics.

There will be several knock-on effects where the overall impact is unknown:

1. The transparency rule not only reveals prices to consumers, but also to other insurance companies and other hospitals. Since these price arrangements were typically conducted in private, this will impact negotiations between insurers and hospitals in competitive markets, which are typically in major cities. This is likely to force outliers on both the cheap end and expensive end to bring their rates closer to market. To the extent that either the hospital or the insurer cannot bring their rates closer to market, this may accelerate consolidation of hospitals into larger networks to improve negotiating power, and/or cause smaller insurers to drop hospitals from their network.

2. Since the transparency list is not comprehensive, and not all medical services are shoppable (i.e. scheduled in advanced, typically non life-threatening), this may cause hospitals to shift costs to services that consumers have no control over, meaning the emergency and unlisted procedures. It will take a few years for hospitals to understand the impact the rule has on their bottom line.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer-driven_healthcare