Cynthia Fisher on NPR’s “On Point” with Meghna Chakrabarti

Cynthia Fisher, founder and Chairman of PatientRightsAdvocate.org, joined Meghna Chakrabarti, host of NPR’s On Point, to discuss the growing momentum of healthcare price transparency in Congress and why employers and unions have joined the fight in this critical moment.  

Read excerpts from Cynthia Fisher below:   

On the impact of healthcare price transparency... “Price transparency is truly transformative because it shifts the power to the patients, consumers, the employers and the unions that help purchase insurance coverage for their workers and their families. This is a tremendous movement to empower the employer and to be able to see where they can get care and what are the comparative prices.” 

On the drastic price variations for care within and across hospitals... “Since the price transparency laws have come into play, we have looked at 100 hospitals across the country, 10 in each state, in 10 states. We found that the prices varied by up to 10 times in the same hospital, for the same procedure, based on what insurance carrier the patient had... What we are also finding is across the state, comparing hospitals to one another we saw a 33 times difference in the price variation for the same procedures. Whether it be an MRI, a colonoscopy or common procedures where someone who’d look to get the same quality of care finds it at a far higher price.” 

On growing momentum for Congressional action... “So, the good news is that the House, bipartisan and overwhelmingly, passed to lower the cost [of healthcare] through price transparency and now the Senate has an even better bill that ensures all prices, actual prices, get revealed by all hospitals and insurance companies and [the bill] has strong enforcement measures to make sure they come into compliance.” 

On the importance of transparency to employers and unions... “Just like we have in any other industry, financial transaction accountability empowers the employers and unions to be in control of the checkbook. Right now, without access to those claims [data] they rely on the third-party middle players—which are big insurance companies, essentially—to pay the bills without even seeing what the bills are... Many employers are finding with just a small handful of claims that they can audit that they are being overcharged and having improper payments to those third parties.” 

On how price transparency shifts the status quo... “The reality is that we have a dysfunctional, for profit and not for profit, hospital and insurer healthcare system. It is dysfunctional because the consumer and the employer and the union are the true purchasers of all healthcare. The purchasers have been blind to know prices and blindsided by outrageous overcharges and every time we get care, we are to sign a blank check. Price transparency disrupts all of that.”