The Trump administration is moving forward with its proposal to force drug makers to reveal the list price of their drugs in consumer facing ads. The pharmaceutical industry is vehemently opposed and will fight this to the death on the grounds that it would be unconstitutional “compelled speech,” and would scare patients away from life-saving medications. Policy experts are also skeptical that such a policy would reduce the rising costs of drugs. They point out that “list prices” are usually just a starting point for negotiations and are nowhere near what patients end up paying, and posting list prices would just add to confusion. Our experience at Zoom+Care with our decade-long experiment in posting prices reveals that this approach is fraught with challenges. But one of the unintended consequences of such a goal is that does expose - to both patients and providers - the insanity, deceptiveness, and purposeful obfuscation of prices - a system supported and fostered by the legacy systems that benefit from confusion in the name of patient health. In our view, better to publish, expose and then deal with it, rather than preserve the current system. Transparency may be the best way to force honesty.
Read: Politico: Trump set to force drugmakers to post prices in ads