Marion Mass, M.D.
Cost transparency is the necessary first step in reducing the unsustainable growing cost of medical care. America is spending half of her tax dollars on health care . Hard working Americans wage growth is being gobbled up by out of pocket costs. Regardless of your personal views on President Trump, his Administration’s Executive Order on transparency will help drive down the cost of health care for ALL Americans. Transparency needs our support as those who run the show want to keep costs hidden. Some in the hospital industry whose cost increases outpace EVERY other sector, are fighting against transparency, teamed up with the health care insurance companies.
We invite YOU to join us in signing the letter below thanking President Trump and the Administration for their bold moves toward achieving real price transparency to create a trusted, functional market in healthcare. Sign at this link: https://actnow.io/DTEUKAo
Thank you to our friends at Patient Rights Advocate, Association of Independent Doctors and AMAC Action, all part of the Free2Care network alongside PPA, for this letter writing campaign.
The Practicing Physicians of America
February 2, 2020
Dear President Trump,
We are writing to thank you for the bold moves you and your Administration are making to bring transparency to healthcare.
Please stay strong against the forces who want to keep the American people in the dark — blindfolded to know prices before we get care, held hostage without access to our complete health information, and having to pay for our healthcare with a blank check.
Healthcare is Americans’ number one concern. According to the 2019 Harvard Harris Poll, price transparency is a solution that 88 percent of Americans on both sides of the aisle agree on. Meanwhile, studies also show, fear of financial ruin is causing people to avoid seeking the healthcare they need, too often until it’s too late.
Americans want and deserve full transparency. We want to know the real prices of healthcare before we receive it. We want to know the quality of the care available to us. We want easy, real-time, digital access to our complete health information including prices, clinical history, and payments. Currently, our opaque system makes all that impossible.
We, a cohort of Americans fighting for a better healthcare system, are so grateful that you and your Administration are courageously working to implement the bipartisan transparency laws that already exist. You are doing so despite strong resistance from the Healthcare Industrial Complex — hospitals, insurers, pharmaceutical companies, and the many middle players — who are all capitalizing on patients’ misfortunes.
Your transparency and interoperability rules will restore Americans’ trust in our healthcare system. These rules will hold the healthcare industry accountable, cut out middle players, and greatly reduce healthcare costs and drug prices by ushering in competition, choice, and the ability for consumers to shop for the best care at the lowest possible price.
Once we have systemwide healthcare price transparency, we will benefit from a functional healthcare market that operates on free-market principles. We will be able to buy healthcare the way we buy groceries or gasoline, clothing or cars. As healthcare prices plummet, wages and savings accounts will increase. By shining a light on hidden prices and quality information, you will put patients in control of their healthcare, and Americans will become healthier and wealthier.
On behalf of patients, workers, seniors, employers and taxpayers, thank you again for taking these brave steps toward Making America’s Healthcare Great Again!