New PRA Report: Healthcare Price Transparency Can Reduce Healthcare Costs by More than $1 Trillion Annually

Paper co-authored by renowned economist Dr. Arthur Laffer and PRA Founder Cynthia Fisher offers solution to the American healthcare crisis

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, PatientRightsAdvocate.org (PRA) published a report co-authored by Founder and Chairman Cynthia Fisher and economist Dr. Arthur Laffer that concludes healthcare price transparency can reduce national healthcare spending by more than $1 trillion annually and extend American life expectancy.

The report explains how price transparency can achieve these dramatic health saving and outcome improvements by empowering patients and employers to access the best care at the best prices. Actual prices can be compared to claims data to prevent and remedy rampant overcharges, spread pricing, and to expose errors and fraud that occur in the shadows of the current opaque system. Price transparency will unleash a competitive, affordable health system that eliminates widespread overcharging. 

"The American people are paying twice as much for healthcare to die four years earlier than in other developed countries," said Cynthia Fisher, founder and chairman of PatientRightsAdvocate.org. "Price transparency provides the opportunity to lower runaway costs and provide access to care with knowledge of quality and outcomes. The opportunity is to save lives while saving money."

"Americans spend nearly twice as much on healthcare as other advanced countries yet have far shorter life expectancies due to hidden prices that drive up costs and scare patients from seeking care," said economist Dr. Arthur B. Laffer. "Healthcare price transparency can save Americans more than $1 trillion a year on healthcare spending and lengthen lifespans by ushering in a pro-consumer healthcare marketplace that empowers patients to choose affordable care when they need it. That's what makes the current effort in Congress to strengthen healthcare price transparency one of the most crucial public policy actions legislators can take to improve American wellbeing."

Click here to read the report.

Top Takeaways

• The top 10 biggest Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) healthcare spenders, excluding the U.S., spent an average of 11.9% of their GDPs on healthcare in 2021.
• The U.S. spent 17.4% of its GDP on healthcare in 2021.
• A 2019 JAMA paper estimated that at least 25% of the more than $4 trillion in annual U.S. healthcare spending is administrative waste, errors, overcharging, and fraud.
• If the U.S. could match other top ten OECD nations' 11.9% of GDP spending performance through price transparency reforms, it would cut its annual healthcare spending from $4.1 trillion to $2.8 trillion, saving $1.3 trillion.
• With true healthcare price transparency, annual savings could amount to $4,000 per person in the country.

PatientRightsAdvocate.org (PRA) is a leading national healthcare price transparency organization dedicated to ushering in systemwide transparency through advocacy, testimony, media, legal research, and grassroots campaigns. PRA believes that the availability and visibility of actual, upfront healthcare prices will greatly lower costs for patients and employers through a functional, competitive healthcare marketplace. In its latest Hospital Price Transparency Compliance report, PRA found that only 36% of American hospitals reviewed are fully complying with the law after almost three years of its implementation.

SOURCE Patient Rights Advocate