Upcoming Supreme Court decision regarding transparency

There has been a movement afoot to bring more transparency to health care, especially in terms of pricing. One of the ways that this has been evident has been how some states have been trying to create what are known as "all-payer" databases. The idea is that as all payers within a state submit their claims information into a common database, researchers and policy analysts (and others) can pore over the data and gain insights. Ideally, payers (and others) would learn enough about pricing to help consumers select better value options when selecting medical care. Some would argue that for these databases to truly be effective, they must include the vast majority of claims for a given population.

Interestingly, some companies have sued to keep their own payments private. A paper in the New England Journal of Medicine reports that 63% of employees in the US receive coverage through self-insured firms, making up a large fraction of the total population. If the majority of these self-insured firms were to not report (whether because of the cost of creating the reports or because they want to hide data), these all-payer databases would take a huge step backwards. The US Supreme Court will hear the case soon, and the decision could have meaningful ramifications for transparency within health care.