Healthcare Dive and the Wall Street Journal  report that

The Trump administration is sounding out the medical industry on requiring hospitals, doctors and other health care providers to publicly disclose the secretly negotiated prices they charge insurance companies for services, a move that would expose for the first time the actual cost of care.

The comment deadline is May 3 according to Regulations.gov.

This action if taken would be a lot more meaningful than the recently implemented rule requiring hospitals to post their chargemaster rates that hardly anyone pays. This action also could be very disruptive to health plan networks.  Per the Wall Street Journal —

Employers and patients, given clearer comparisons, might change their habits—though consumers often show limited inclination to shop for health-care services, even when they face significant costs under high-deductible health plans. “You can’t shop for care if you don’t know what the prices are,” said HHS’s Mr. Rucker. Once publicly available, patients may have the benefit of third-party technology companies aggregating the price data and building shopping tools that show the negotiated costs for services charged by various hospitals and providers.

To a certain extent though people already have this information in many circumstances. For example, the FEHBlog is currently receiving physical therapy. He can see what his health plan is paying the physical therapy clinic from the explanation of benefits. This action would give patients and health plan sponsors the pricing information  before the first visit.  The information aggregators, the apps, the new tools for employers, would create the genie in the bottle effect here. We shall see.