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Comment by nomilk | Hacker News Reader

> CMS's price transparency law, which requires all hospitals to post their prices online in a single, machine-readable file

Whoever got this legislation through deserves a pat on the back.

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It was part of the ACA, but hospitals tied it up in court for a long time.

Thanks, Obama!

Many hospitals and providers are ignoring it, perfectly willing to eat the fine, if it ever comes.

I wonder if one could automate finding the hospitals that don’t do this and filing a complaint that leads to a fine

like patent trolls for a cause

The competitors that do publish the data have a reasonable interest in that, so I would expect this to happen.

The fact that we're talking about "competitors" in the context of hospitals whose job is to save lives is incredibly broken as a non-american.

If there was a bounty I would do it

> Whoever got this legislation through deserves a pat on the back.

That would be Trump.

Trump's administration offices finalized the rules on how it would work, but the law was part of the Affordable Care Act, so it would be the Democratic congress and presidency of the Obama era.

Per https://www.sihd.org/affordable-care-act-price-list-2718-e and others

One wonders what took so long, of course.

> One wonders what took so long, of course.

No One doesn't.

One need only appreciate the incestuous network of corruption that controls how long these cans get kicked down the road to fathom what took so long. Unfortunately for the medical industry someone that wasn't beholden to them got into office briefly and made it happen.

Not exactly: In 2019: "Specifically, we updated our guidelines to require hospitals to make available a list of their current standard charges via the internet in a machine-readable format and to update this information at least annually, or more often as appropriate." [1]

Which is part of this executive order that Trump signed: "Within 60 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall propose a regulation, consistent with applicable law, to require hospitals to publicly post standard charge information, including charges and information based on negotiated rates and for common or shoppable items and services, in an easy-to-understand, consumer-friendly, and machine-readable format using consensus-based data standards that will meaningfully inform patients' decision making and allow patients to compare prices across hospitals." [2]

> One wonders what took so long, of course.

What took so long is that you misunderstand how these rules work, Obama didn't actually do it, Trump did.

1: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/11/27/2019-24...

2: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/06/27/2019-13...

> (e) STANDARD HOSPITAL CHARGES.—Each hospital operating within the United States shall for each year establish (and update) and make public (in accordance with guidelines developed by the Secretary) a list of the hospital’s standard charges for items and services provided by the hospital, including for diagnosis-related groups established under section 1886(d)(4) of the Social Security Act.

Signed 2010, PATIENT PROTECTION AND AFFORDABLE CARE ACT. Sure sounds like Obama did it and not Trump.

http://housedocs.house.gov/energycommerce/ppacacon.pdf

Obama might have tried to do it, but there's more to lawmaking than just writing it - there's also implementing it, which Obama most certainly did not do. And as a member of the Executive Branch, that's kind of his job....

Or are you implying everyone just ignored it for 12 years?

Also, Trump's order is significantly larger than what's in the ACA, and Trump actually implemented his order.

You can give Obama credit for trying, but Trump gets credit for actually doing it, and for doing it much better than Obama.

It was Trump through a regulatory change by HHS.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2020/11/06/on-healt...

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