[mimsee]

Why are they banning the methods instead of saying how the pricing should be displayed. E.g. why say you cannot have "noindex" instead of saying "the pricing information needs to be in plain-text, human-readable, accessible, indexable..." and so on.

[lmkg]

They are doing that as well. They are posting general requirements, as well as providing details on specific situations. From the main project @ https://github.com/CMSgov/price-transparency-guide

Section: Overview

> All machine-readable files must [...] made available to the public without restrictions that would impede the re-use of that information.

Section: Public Discoverability

> These machine-readable files post made available to the public without restrictions that would impede the re-use of that information.

[rmah]

They do both. As well as provide a description of the regulation's goals, context and examples. This is how regulation works. It typically starts with a rather vague law, then the regulatory agencies make up general rules to implement said law. Then they create a bunch of more detailed rules. Then as times change, they amend those rules. You can even ask them about novel situations and get a (non-binding) "opinion" from government agency. In my experience, the federal gov regulatory apparatus is not as inept as most people seem to think.

[SllX]

That’s a good way to write a law but regulations are guidance under which the regulator won’t come after you when it considers law enforcement action i.e. the law enforcement agency’s interpretation of the law and your obligations under it. They can afford to get into the nitty gritty, and it can even be beneficial for them to do so for all involved.

This way lawyers don’t have to divine from the law that noindex and nofollow tags might invite enforcement action, if they have even heard of them before, they can read the regs, and advise their companies and clients properly.

[toomuchtodo]

Why not both?

[mimsee]

Because wouldn't they have to keep adding new techniques to the list continuously when in the other case they can say in what format the content needs to be available in.

[pseudalopex]

Indexable is open to interpretation. No disallow directives in robots.txt isn't.

[dillondoyle]

Better yet in a database with consistent schema