Transparency in medical costs would help

Gerhard B. Holt, our senior fellow with a special interest in health policy and Joseph Bernstein, our co-founder published a recent article in the Philadelphia Inquirer on the need for transparency in medical costs.

Hidden prices are higher prices. When information about price is obscured, markets cannot function effectively. This idea should be intuitively obvious: Only a fool visits a used-car dealer without some knowledge of what the desired vehicle should cost.

Despite this, nearly 20 percent of our economy attempts to function without clear price information. Specifically, health-care prices in America are hidden prices.