Price Transparency: Friend or Foe? How Price Transparency May Impact Competition in the Health Care Industry

The U.S. health care system is in the midst of disruptive changes designed to expand access, improve quality, and lower costs. Price transparency is now a hotly debated issue in the wake of the government’s recent push for transparency in certain sectors of the health care industry. This paper argues that while price transparency in the health sector is necessary, price transparency, standing alone, will not solve the problem of growing health care costs. While the notion of injecting free-ma