WASHINGTON— U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA), a member of the Senate Finance Committee and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, joined Bloomberg Daybreak: Americas this morning to discuss the bipartisan effort he is leading to develop legislation to improve price transparency in the health care market and lower costs.
Key excerpts of Dr. Cassidy’s remarks are transcribed below.
CASSIDY: It should be like buying an airline ticket. You know where you want to go, the time and date. You log on. If the price suits your budget, you go for it. If not, you change your plans. That should be how getting a CT scan is. Go now, $2,500. Go Thursday at midnight, get it for $250. Allow the consumer to have that price transparency. That will drive down prices.
HOST: So, senator that makes such good sense, and it’s worked in so many parts of the U.S. economy. It’s a bipartisan bill. Where’s the resistance?
CASSIDY: … Well obviously if you’re the person who’s charging—as was reported last week—$17,000 for a urine drug test, you don’t want that price transparency. Imagine that. You go in for a pre-employment physical urine drug screen, and it’s $17,000. This is reported in Kaiser Health News. So if you’re the person jacking up the price, you don’t like the price transparency. But we should give power to the patient, the power of price transparency.
###