NYC Hospitals Soon to Be More Transparent About Pricing Due to City Council Bill

NYC Hospitals Soon to Be More Transparent About Pricing Due to City Council Bill 

By: Benyamin Davidsons

The City Council is working to pass a bill which will require hospitals to be more transparent about the costs of procedures.

Different hospitals perform the same procedures at a wide range of different costs, and patients most likely wouldn’t know the difference in price upfront.  While the problem is ongoing throughout the country, New York’s city council is trying to remedy this lack of transparency with new legislation.  As reported by the NY Times, on Thursday, the Council moved to pass a bill that will allow New Yorkers to look online and compare the different prices hospitals charge for the same service.

The new law would create the first city “health care accountability office” in the United States, making NY the first to allow patients to analyze hospital costs and choose a provider based on this knowledge.  “There is no other area where, as a consumer, you’re procuring a service and you have no idea what you’re going to be charged,” said Councilwoman Julie Menin of Manhattan, who sponsored the bill. “This is a simple, straightforward consumer protection measure.”

The over-inflated bills have been a particularly burden on noninsured patients– especially when they are blindsided and don’t receive the bills till weeks after the procedure. New York has about one million uninsured residents — even after the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. “If you’re uninsured, this bill is a game-changer,” Ms. Menin said.  Costs for procedures often do vary widely, and patients in many cases would base their decisions on which hospitals to go to, if costs were known.  For example, a cesarean section delivery can cost about $55,000 at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx (one of the few hospitals to list the prices on their website), while it may cost only roughly $18,000 at a publicly-run city hospital, per a recent survey.

As per the Times, the bill has strong support in the council, with 42 (out of the 51) members co-sponsoring the bill. NYC Mayor Eric Adams, also made a statement that he supports the bill.  “This bill will make it easier for New Yorkers to find information on hospital pricing, and we’re grateful to our partners in labor and the Council for pushing this forward,” said Kate Smart, a spokeswoman for the mayor.

That, however, doesn’t mean there isn’t any resistance to the bill. The legislation is being strongly opposed by The Greater New York Hospital Association, which is the biggest hospital and health system trade association, representing over 160 hospitals and health systems in New York.  The group maintains that hospitals are already working to comply with federal requirements set in 2021 obliging them to publish a complete list of the prices they negotiate with private insurers.

In fact, many hospitals do not comply even with that federal requirement, per a study by a nonprofit patient rights’ group.  The study says that just under 25 percent of the 2,000 hospitals surveyed are complying with the 2021 law. That rate was even lower in NYC, with only about 6 percent of local hospitals publishing their prices.  The group argues that the bill targets the hospitals and leaves the insurance companies to reap the benefits. “It virtually ignores the behemoth national for-profit health insurance companies that make enormous profits in New York’s health care economy and ship those profits out of New York to their parent organizations and shareholders,” said David Rich, an executive vice president at the Greater New York Hospital Association.