In 2019, hospitals in the United States are required to publish price lists for all their services online.

With the advent of 2019, hospitals across the country are required to disclose their previously secret price lists for basic services.

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Beginning with January 1, hospitals must publish the basic prices of each service or procedure on the Internet. In these detailed lists will be listed thousands of services, writes USA Today.

The 2010 Affordable Care Act required hospitals to provide these lists to clients, but until this week hospitals were not required to publish them. The new law was another step to increase the transparency of prices for medical services.

However, health experts stress that consumers should not view these lists as realistic price points.

This is due to the fact that the prices indicated in such a list are usually the starting point for payment negotiations between hospitals and insurance companies and have little to do with the fact that most patients end up paying.

These prices will be indicated in the initial bills of patients before the insurance company as a result of negotiations will ensure their reduction.

“This is not particularly useful data. I don’t expect it to have a significant impact or be a driver of lower health care costs,” said Marianne Udov-Phillips, executive director of the Center for Health Care and Research Transformation in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

For patients with commercial health insurance plans, such as Blue Cross Blue Shield, the price of services and procedures is determined by private negotiations between their insurance company and the hospital.

Therefore, these patients must check with their insurance company for current pricing information, including the amounts they have to pay, before the insurance takes effect.

“If a patient goes online and sees a price for a service that they can't afford, I worry that some consumers might be put off getting the care they need,” said Mark Fendrick, a professor at the University of Michigan.

Some uninsured patients may indeed be billed based on published price lists. But, according to experts, hospitals are usually willing to offer discounts at the request of patients.

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