9 out of 10 voters support real hospital, insurer price transparency: Poll

Nearly all participants in a new bipartisan survey of likely voters said they support the federal government requiring true price transparency from hospitals and health insurance providers.

Among those surveyed, 92 percent said they would strongly or somewhat support the federal government “requiring hospitals and health insurance companies to provide real, actual prices – not estimates.” In a separate question, 77 percent said they would prefer a president who demands transparency in health care prices.

In the same survey, 77 percent of likely voters said medical debt was a major problem, with a smaller percentage citing credit card debt and student loan debt as also being a major problem.

The poll was jointly conducted by Kristen Soltis Anderson of Echelon Insights and John Della Volpe of SocialSphere on behalf of the nonprofit Patient Rights Advocate.

“It’s not often these days that I see such enormous broad-based agreement across party lines around an issue, but that’s what this data says about price transparency in healthcare,” Anderson said in a statement.

“I think any candidate seeing these numbers has a big opportunity to speak to a wide range of voters about a major cost-of-living problem that deserves to be a bigger part of the conversation.”

An executive order signed by former President Trump in 2019 established hospital price transparency rules issued through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The rules went into effect in 2021, but hospitals have been slow to comply.

In July 2021, President Biden signed an executive order directing the Department of Health and Human Services to “support existing hospital price transparency rules.”

Among survey participants, 35 percent said they had postponed seeking medical care in the past year due to concerns over not knowing how much the care would cost. Out-of-pocket costs, monthly health insurance fees, the cost of prescriptions and the cost of hospital visits ranked among the biggest current health care issues in the U.S., according to those surveyed.

The most recent hospital price transparency report from Patient Right Advocate, released in February, found that only 34.5 percent of hospitals complied with federal price transparency rules, a smaller percentage of hospitals than the previous report.

“Time and again, the American people have voiced strong support for price transparency in healthcare. The price of healthcare impacts all Americans, no matter their background, age, or zip code,” Cynthia A. Fisher, founder and chairman of PatientRightsAdvocate.org, said in a statement.

“While Americans clearly care most about transparent pricing in healthcare, the highest levels of government have chosen instead to address hidden fees for concerts and sporting events,” added Fisher. “Lawmakers have also placed more emphasis on student loan debt than medical debt, our nation’s leading cause of bankruptcy.”

The new survey was conducted Aug. 23-27 with a sample size of 2,024 likely voters. The results of the survey have a margin of error of 2.4 percentage points.