Marty Makary on Hospital Price Transparency: recommends

Dr. Marty Makary has led a national campaign for hospitals to post their prices publicly. He says the idea — developed in his 2019 book The Price We Pay — became the price-transparency executive order of the first Trump administration, which required hospitals to publish their prices. He discussed the effort in an All-In podcast interview in roughly February 2026.

Makary’s stated reasoning is that healthcare cannot function as a market when prices are hidden. He argues that posted prices let patients compare costs, reward fair-priced providers, and put downward pressure on the inflated “list prices” hospitals charge uninsured and out-of-network patients.

He connects price transparency to the broader pricing failures he identified in his September 28, 2026 American College of Surgeons lecture — including his research finding that negotiated insurance prices exceed cash prices in 65% of cases.

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