With new rules emanating from the White House this month focusing on health care price transparency, health care costs are in the spotlight at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. A hospital transparency mandate will go into effect in January 2021 as a final rule, and a second rule with a focus on health plans and friendly explanations-of-benefits will receive comments in the Federal Register until January 14, 2020.

As patients continue to grow muscles as payors and health consumers, transparency is one key to enabling people to “shop” for those health care and medical products and services that are “shoppable.” That’s a necessary, if insufficient, pillar on which to build health consumers and ultimately, engaged health citizens who own their health.

But transparency extends beyond consumer-facing costs, that must be personalized based on an individual’s health plan.

Health politics shapes what choices, if any, people have as health consumers — and we’re now just under twelve months until the 2020 Presidential election, which will certainly play out as a health care election in real time as the 2018 Midterms were and 2019 states polls, as well.

Read my post on getting transparent about transparency in Medecision’s blog here for more details and a deeper dive into this important issue.