Below is a joint statement from the American Hospital Association, America’s Essential Hospitals, the Association of American Medical Colleges, the Children’s Hospital Association, and the Federation of American Hospitals on the proposed calendar year 2020 Outpatient Prospective Payment System rule:
Hospitals and health systems want to ensure that patients have access to information they need to choose their health care, including their out-of-pocket obligations. This rule, however, is a misguided attempt to improve price transparency for patients because it fails to give them the information they need. Disclosing the negotiated rate between insurers and hospitals will not help patients make decisions about their care. Instead, this disclosure could harm patients by reducing patient access to care. This is the wrong approach to price transparency, and the administration should reverse course on this provision.
The Association of American Medical Colleges is a not-for-profit association dedicated to transforming health care through innovative medical education, cutting-edge patient care, and groundbreaking medical research. Its members are all 154 accredited U.S. and 17 accredited Canadian medical schools; nearly 400 major teaching hospitals and health systems, including 51 Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers; and more than 80 academic societies. Through these institutions and organizations, the AAMC serves the leaders of America’s medical schools and teaching hospitals and their more than 173,000 full-time faculty members, 89,000 medical students, 129,000 resident physicians, and more than 60,000 graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in the biomedical sciences.
