{"id":39197,"date":"2020-06-25T20:16:33","date_gmt":"2020-06-26T00:16:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=39197"},"modified":"2020-06-25T20:16:33","modified_gmt":"2020-06-26T00:16:33","slug":"transparency-is-always-a-good-idea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=39197","title":{"rendered":"Transparency Is Always A Good Idea"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yesterday The Epoch Times<\/a> reported that Judge Carl Nichols with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has ruled that the Trump<\/a> administration can compel hospitals<\/a> and insurers to publish negotiated costs for health care services that are normally kept secret from patients. This is wonderful news for patients in hospitals although I suspect that the medical community is not happy with the decision.<\/p>\n

The article reports:<\/p>\n

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) introduced a rule in November 2019 that defined \u201cstandard charges,\u201d laid out the publication requirements for hospitals and insurers, and the department\u2019s\u00a0enforcement plans.<\/strong><\/p>\n

At the time,\u00a0hospital and insurer organizations and advocacy groups objected to the agency\u2019s proposals, disputing that the Trump administration has the authority to require the disclosures, which they believe are trade secrets. The hospitals also disputed that the policy would benefit consumers and lead to lower costs, countering that compliance would instead be too burdensome and \u201cget in the way\u201d of providing services for patients.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The finalization of the rule<\/a>, which goes into effect January 2021, prompted the American Hospital Association (AHA) to sue, arguing that the White House didn\u2019t have the authority to make the directive, had violated the First Amendment in its creation, and had acted in an \u201carbitrary and capricious\u201d manner.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The article concludes:<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s executive order on improving transparency on health care prices and quality required the HHS secretary to propose a regulation to publicly post standard charge information \u201cin an easy-to-understand, consumer-friendly, and machine-readable format using consensus-based data standards that will meaningfully inform patients\u2019 decision making and allow patients to compare prices across hospitals.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

It also requires hospitals to regularly update the posted information.<\/strong><\/p>\n

David Mitchell, the founder of advocacy group Patients For Affordable Drugs, said in a statement to The Epoch Times in response to the ruling that he thinks \u201cwe have to get rid of our system in which prices are secret and hidden from those who must pay them.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is good news for the people who pay for hospital care.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yesterday The Epoch Times reported that Judge Carl Nichols with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has ruled that the Trump administration can compel hospitals and insurers to publish negotiated costs for health care services that are … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[10542,1551,7245,1391,10589,4455,12407,11002,11021],"class_list":["post-39197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-department-of-health-and-human-services-hhs","tag-executive-order","tag-health-and-human-services","tag-hospital","tag-president-trump","tag-price","tag-the-epoch-times","tag-trump-administration","tag-u-s-district-court-for-the-district-of-columbia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39197"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39197\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39198,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39197\/revisions\/39198"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}