Bill seeks more upfront transparency in health care costs

When you’re sick and need health care, you’re typically not going to learn about the cost of your care until after it’s been delivered.

That’s not “normal or acceptable,” says Rep. Steve Elkins (DFL-Bloomington).

He sponsors HF57, which would require most hospitals, outpatient surgical centers, and medical practices to make available to the public a list of current standard charges for all items and services provided by the medical practice.

The House Commerce Finance and Policy Committee approved the bill, as amended, by an 11-7 party-line vote Wednesday and sent it to the House Health Finance and Policy Committee. The companion, SF113, sponsored by Sen. Rich Draheim (R-Madison Lake), awaits action by the Senate Health and Human Services Finance and Policy Committee.

Rep. Steve Elkins

Only those medical centers with revenues of more than $50 million per year would be affected by the proposed legislation, Elkins said.

Most important for health care consumers, Elkins said, the bill would require the Department of Health to take the pricing data from hospitals and “develop and make available to the public, a tool for the public to use to compare charges for a specific item or service across medical practices.”

Joe Schindler, vice president of finance policy and analytics at the Minnesota Hospital Association, opposes the bill, saying that hospitals are already burdened with many other regulatory requirements on data reporting.

Many small, rural hospitals would still meet the $50 million revenue threshold in the bill for mandated reporting, he said, but just don’t have the staff resources to comply.

“On behalf of our members, I request that you not impose another data requirement on top of thinly stretched resources during a pandemic,” he said.

Health care plans are best situated to provide consumers with information of health care costs, Schindler said.

Elkins disagreed that the data reporting requirements would be overly burdensome, noting that the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Hospital Price Transparency Rule already requires hospitals to provide pricing information online about the items and services they provide.

He notes the bill would merely require individual hospitals to provide the same information to the Department of Health, which would create an online tool making it easy for consumers to compare prices at different hospitals in the state.