Healthcare Transparency in the Age of COVID-19

In addition to causing widespread morbidity and mortality, the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed everyday life and has placed an enormous burden on a US healthcare system for which rising costs were already a major concern. Well before the current crisis, there was wide recognition of the need for greater healthcare price transparency in the United States as a way to promote competition, reduced spending, and a more efficient allocation of resources. The additional demands of the COVID-19 pandemic have accentuated the need for policymakers to take this opportunity to advance healthcare transparency as well as give consumers incentives to use the newly available information to make better healthcare choices. There are short-term measures that can be taken even as the medical impact of COVID-19 is being brought under control. More importantly, longer-term structural reform of the current insurance-based financing system is needed in order to alleviate the stress on the healthcare system and obviate the need for government intervention.