Is Medical Cost Transparency Possible in South Dakota?

New Hampshire medical cost transparency site https://nhhealthcost.nh.gov/

Patients Rights Advocate https://www.patientrightsadvocate.org/seventh-semi-annual-hospital-price-transparency-report-november-2024

Background information:

"In November of 2023, CMS finalized requirements for hospitals to post their machine-readable files in a standardized file format, beginning on July 1, 2024. 5 While uniformity and standards are needed to enable price comparisons, the details of this change and related guidance in fact, roll back key price transparency requirements. The updated rule allows hospitals to post percentages and algorithms instead of actual prices effective July 1, 2024, and will permit estimates and averages instead of dollars-and-cents prices beginning on January 1, 2025. Guidance issued on GitHub also limits the prices required to be displayed in the pricing file to only one type of charge.6

Through these rollbacks, CMS permits hospitals to obfuscate their prices behind estimates, averages, and algorithms, while still being deemed compliant. Because these changes hinder consumers’ ability to access and compare actual prices, we also assessed each hospital for its “Pricing Data Sufficiency” based on the availability of actual, dollars-and-cents prices found in the files. Only 16.8% of hospitals reviewed (335) were found to be sufficient in their disclosure of dollars-and-cents prices, and 6.7% of hospitals reviewed (133) were found to be both fully complying and posting sufficient pricing data.

Our report includes links to each hospital’s own source file, as well as a file converted to comma separated values (csv) format where appropriate. Additionally, we provide free, searchable access to all available U.S. hospital price files, both raw and converted, online at

https://hospitalpricingfiles.org/

Again, folks, I know you're reading a lot of what I'm sending you, but, as you can see above, if we start getting health care & dental care price TRANSPARENCY (through utilization of the already-existing data which our state's department of insurance already, by law, has to collect), and for a mere $829 thousand (rough estimate) per year.....so much of this could be solved, and solved right now for our state.