“We launched our advocacy program in Colorado in 2017, and drafted powerful legislation, which will serve as a prototype for our efforts in other states.” – David Silverstein
Healthcare Price Transparency Ballot Initiative
The U.S. healthcare system needs a lot of fixing, but nothing can change until there is full transparency in healthcare. Healthcare price transparency is where we are starting our policy advocacy. Our first goal is to get comprehensive healthcare price transparency legislation passed in all 50 states and at the Federal level.
During the past 50 years, healthcare billing has grown increasingly complex. Today, billing is so complex it bewilders patients, leaving us feeling helpless and incapable of being genuinely responsible healthcare consumers, while increasingly high deductibles makes us responsible for a bigger share of our healthcare bills than ever before. At the same time, billing complexity is used for financial advantage by many members of the healthcare industry.
We launched our advocacy program in Colorado in 2017, and drafted powerful legislation, which will serve as a prototype for our efforts in other states. This legislation is unlike any previous price transparency efforts in its depth and breadth.
This healthcare billing transparency measure was written to ensure total transparency from all commercial participants in the healthcare system. Prior efforts at transparency have only focused on one sector of the system at a time, making those measures ineffective. While constructing this law, we acted on the principle that without complete transparency, there is effectively no transparency.
Every one of us is a patient. Every one of us has interacted with the U.S. healthcare system. There is nothing more important than getting our system on the road to its own recovery, and transparency is the place to start.
David Silverstein – Founder, BrokenHealthcare.org
BrokenHealthcare.org is not a charity. It’s a movement! And every American is a stakeholder.
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6 Key Features of the Ballot Initiative
Healthcare providers must publish their prices for all services.
Healthcare providers must indicate to all patients whether they negotiate prices with any patient.
If a provider has failed to publish its prices at the time a healthcare service is provided to a patient, that patient will not be held responsible for paying the charges associated with that service.
Health insurance providers must include information on how they calculate payments and reimbursements to providers.
Health insurance providers must publish the prices they have negotiated with all healthcare providers and pharmacies, along with their reimbursement policies.
Pharmacies must publish their price for all pharmaceuticals and disclose any rebates they provide to insurance carriers.
