S2E1: What Can Price Transparency Tell Us About Hospital Pricing? (Prof. Ge Bai)
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In today’s episode, we discuss what price transparency and hospital disclosures of prices tell us about hospital pricing.
My guest is Ge Bai, Professor of Accounting at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and Professor of Health Policy & Management at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Bai is fascinated by money and time. Through the lens of accounting, she is an expert in healthcare finance and policy. Today we talk about what the Hospital Price Transparency Final Rule and hospital disclosures about prices tell us about the healthcare market and how it still fails to manage high healthcare costs.
The paper we discuss can be found here
00:00:00 – 00:00:32. Unbiased Estimator Intro
00:00:33 – 00:02:00. Price ambiguity is prevalent in the US Healthcare system. The Hospital Price Transparency Final Rule was implemented on January 1, 2021, by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to promote price competition and improve hospital care affordability. Questions we are exploring on today’s episode:
- What are we learning about healthcare prices from hospital responses to this rule?
- What is the point of health insurance companies anyway?
- How do we truly make changes to achieve affordable healthcare?
- https://www.cms.gov/hospital-price-transparency#:~:text=Starting%20January%201%2C%202021%2C%20each,with%20all%20items%20and%20services.
00:02:01 – 00:05:09. Intro to our guest Professor Ge Bai, PhD, CPA. Ge Bai is a Professor of Accounting at Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and a Professor of Health Policy & Management at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is also currently serving as a visiting scholar at the Health Analysis Divison of the Congressional Budget Office.
00:05:10 – 00:07:58. Professor Bai and her team studied data released by hospitals in response to the Hospital Price Transparency Final Rule. Professor Bai defines the Hospital Price Transparency Final Rule for our listeners.
00:07:59 – 00:08:59. Professor Bai defines “chargemaster prices”.
00:09:00 – 00:10:34. Professor Bai talks about one of the important differences with the new disclosures from hospitals due to the Hospital Price Transparency Final Rule, as hospitals are now telling the public what they are actually charging consumers and insurance companies for medical services. Not what price they are starting negotiations at.
00:10:35 – 00:14:22. Professor Bai talks about the challenges to hospital compliance with the Hospital Price Transparency Final Rule and also discusses the strategic and pragmatic reasons for these decisions.
00:14:23 – 00:27:21. Professor Bai and her team looked at the cash prices and the commercially negotiated prices for 70 services that were deemed to be high-value common services. For these services, they compared hospital cash prices to the median commercially negotiated price. She talks about this methodology, her results, and how we can proceed from here.
00:27:22 – 00:32:38. Daniel asks Professor Bai about some of the hardest concepts for her to convey to the layperson and some concepts she wishes people could understand better within healthcare.
00:32:39 – 00:35:38. Professor Bai talks about some of the most influential scientists in her career.
00:35:39 – 00:37:21. Outro
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