Federal hospital price transparency rules went into effect in 2021. Four years later, hospitals across the country — including the four largest hospitals in the Texas Medical Center, as assessed in a new Baker Institute brief — still aren’t complying. On this episode of “Baker Briefing,” Vivian Ho explains why opacity in pricing is a key driver of rising health care costs and what policymakers can do to tackle the problem.
This conversation was recorded on April 21, 2025.
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Mentioned in this episode:
Derek Jenkins, Sasathorn Tapaneeyakul, and Vivian Ho, “Prices Versus Costs: Unpacking Rising US Hospital Profits,” Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, September 6, 2024.
Sebastian Spataro Solorzano, Blake Davidson, and Vivian Ho, “Revisiting Price Transparency at Texas Medical Center Hospitals,” Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy, April 29, 2025.
Additional sources for this episode:
American Hospital Association, Trend Watch Chartbook 2018: Trends Affecting Hospitals and Health Systems (2018), https://www.aha.org/system/files/media/file/2022/11/2018-TrendWatch-Chartbook-Full.pdf.
Zach Cooper et al., “The Price Ain’t Right? Hospital Prices and Health Spending on the Privately Insured,” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 134, no. 1 (2019): 51–107, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjy020.
“The Role Of Administrative Waste In Excess US Health Spending,” Health Affairs, October 6, 2022, https://www.healthaffairs.org/content/briefs/role-administrative-waste-excess-us-health-spending.
Salpy Kanimian and Vivian Ho, “Why Does the Cost of Employer-Sponsored Coverage Keep Rising?,” Health Affairs Scholar 2, no. 6 (2024): qxae078, https://doi.org/10.1093/haschl/qxae078.
Lunna Lopes et al., “Health Care Debt in the U.S.: The Broad Consequences of Medical and Dental Bills,” KFF, June 16, 2022, https://www.kff.org/report-section/kff-health-care-debt-survey-main-findings/.
Anne Martin et al., “National Health Expenditures in 2023: Faster Growth as Insurance Coverage and Utilization Increased,” Health Affairs 44, no. 1 (2025): 12–22, https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2024.01375.
Anu Singh, “Hospital and Health System M&A in Review: Financial Pressures Emerge as Key Driver in 2023,” Kaufman Hall, January 18, 2024, https://www.kaufmanhall.com/insights/research-report/2023-hospital-and-health-system-ma-review.
Laura Tollen, Elizabeth Keating, and Alan Weil, “How Administrative Spending Contributes to Excess US Health Spending,” Health Affairs Forefront, February 20, 2020, https://www.healthaffairs.org/content/forefront/administrative-spending-contributes-excess-us-health-spending.
A full transcript of this episode is available here. This transcript was AI-generated and has not been through editorial review.
Hosted by David M. Satterfield, the “Baker Briefing” podcast delivers timely analysis on breaking policy developments and other critical policy issues of the day in conversations with experts at the Baker Institute. New episodes are released weekly.
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