woman looking at question marksAmong the difficulties under the CMS's newprice-transparency rule is the fact that the consumer will have noidea from the posted prices how his or her insurance will affectthe final total. (Photo: Getty)

On January 1, a new Centers for Medicare and Medicaid rulerequiring hospitals to post their prices online went into effect, butit hasn't been the price transparency silver bullet they hoped for.As many consumers are finding–and news outlets, including theNew York Times, are reporting–having the pricesposted doesn't mean that the data is intelligible.

The requirement calls for all hospitals to post their chargemaster prices for services online in amachine-readable format, despite concern from hospital execs thatproviding chargemaster prices will “confuse” consumers.

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Marlene Satter

Marlene Y. Satter has worked in and written about the financial industry for decades.