Question.1118 - Before engaging in this week's discussion, watch the video titled What if all US health care costs were transparent?Links to an external site. Discuss the potential benefits and challenges of transparent health care costs. Next, provide an example of a current event (within the past 12-24 months) in which lack of transparency in health care costs created a significant burden on patient finances. Write a well-supported post based on this current event. Provide context for the event being described and consider these questions: What was the outcome of the event? What are the benefits of having transparent health costs? What are the challenges of having transparent health costs? What did you learn or gain from this discussion? *Select three options above to explore.
Answer Below:
The debate around price transparency within the healthcare system is quite significant and important. It ensures that there will be clarity between the communication and engagement of the variety of stakeholders. Stability within the system would be possible using transparency within the healthcare system on a consistent basis. Clear assessment of the overall cost will be crucial for enhancing support for the patients and also help the hospital administration, insurance companies and government agencies to plan their work systems. The benefits of price transparency would be connected with the presence of financial budgeting and planning for the patients. They would be able to clearly figure out overall expenses which would be covered by insurance companies and the overall amount that they are likely to bear through personal finances. It will create scope for managing the overall patient requirements and planning while handling healthcare costs. There will be reduction of the overall stress for the patients while dealing with the healthcare costs. Also, price transparency will create scope for healthcare organizations to understand the ways in which they would be able to optimize costs. Constant review of the existing cost structure would be possible which will spur innovation with the hope of reducing the costs while enhancing overall works efficiency. However, there will be presence of some degree of challenges in the implementation of the price transparency. First, it may be used by insurance companies to deny complete costs which the patients are likely to incur while managing their treatment. Second, the complications and variations of different patient care would make it difficult for the hospitals and medical professionals to clearly identify and explain the process in which price transparency would be managed. All these elements would mean that the long term management of the quality of price management would be reduced. There has been debate around a proposal by the Biden Administration to make it more difficult for hospitals to flout the price transparency norms. It intends to ensure that the hospitals would be forced to share price figures for the costs of treatments to patients ("Getting clear prices for hospital care could get easier under a proposed rule", 2023). It is aimed at enhancing overall engagement of the needs of the patients and provides clear price costs for all stakeholders. However, such kind of moves would be met with resistance and concerns about the inability of hospitals to manage and handle price variations which arise due to different care needs of patients. References "Getting clear prices for hospital care could get easier under a proposed rule". (2023). Retrieved from https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/08/10/1193045475/getting-clear-prices-for-hospital-care-could-get-easier-under-a-proposed-ruleMore Articles From Medicine
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