This is insurance fraud and abuse. Over-billing is very common in the American medical world. As long as there is no oversite, nor competition, it will continue and grow worse over time.
Both parties have symbiotic relationships with profiteers that stifle progress and innovation.
I heard all about this, and so did lots of people. It was as well covered as anything is these days.
Second, health care experts don't seem to think much of the new rules, since there's little evidence anyone price shops for care, especially since, regardless of published prices, they're not the ones paying for them; they pay indirectly, through premiums. I think price transparency is a good thing and the rule is a good thing, but I don't think this is "huge".
Third, the "obvious reasons" snark at the end of your comment poisons what would otherwise have been a valuable contribution to the thread.
I suggest the obvious reason this new regulation doesn’t get as much press attention as you’d like has less to do with Trump and more to do with its futility.
> Fathollahi, the Manhattan Specialty Care physician, didn't answer our questions about the bill. Neither did Dr. Shawn Khodadadian, listed in state records as the CEO of Manhattan Gastroenterology.
Because they CAN'T. Why didn't NPR publish their response, which is likely along the lines of how they are forbidden to discuss patient charges and procedures?
It's far more likely this was a mistake that will end up costing the doctor 25k when the insurance company hires someone who checks for things like this, which they will.
Such doctors who participate in schemes, entirely unsurprisingly, order multiple standard deviations above their expected imaging needs.
Healthcare costs will inevitably rise in the US however, as labor is scarce, practioners are scarce, people are increasingly unhealthy and older...we are in for a massive healthcare cost spike due to economic conditions and blaming HMOs is emotional and politician inspired at best. Its like blaming insurance companies for a rise in car crashes.
Given how common stuff like in TFA is, plus so much more on smaller and less eye-popping scales, and seeming endless ability for providers to say "oops our bad now it's fixed" when caught and avoid punishment, I'm skeptical that these extreme penalties kick in often enough to counteract incentives to let prices creep higher.
[EDIT] from my personal experience, it's mostly up to individuals to burn tons of time investigating irregularities and escalate them to elected officials & regulators when insurers or providers dig in their heels, to which the officials' and regulators' response is usually a strongly worded letter that makes your particular problem go away, with no follow up, presumably because pursuing it will be difficult, expensive, and unlikely to yield results that help anyone with their next election or promotion. That's kinda how it looks like this one's going, in fact, though maybe there'll be some regulatory follow-up with something resembling teeth, since it got press. It's like the Twitter-complaint model of customer support, but way worse.