24 Warning Letters Say a Partial Price Is a Deceptive Price
This week the Federal Trade Commission sent warning letters to 24 of the largest health care companies in the country. The message was simple. A price that leaves out the doctor's fee or the facility fee may not be a price at all. It may be deception.
The FTC didn't say who got the letters. It did post the template. Price is a "material term," it says, and a disclosure can still mislead when it leaves out "certain charges like physician fees or facility fees," or covers only part of the expected care. Patients can reasonably believe they were told the total. They weren't.
The part I'd underline: following the CMS price transparency rules is not a safe harbor. Hospitals have been posting machine-readable files since 2021 and calling that compliance. The FTC is saying the file is the floor. The patient on the phone asking what this will cost is the real test.
Anybody who has had a scheduled procedure knows how this goes. You get a number. Then the surgeon's bill. Then anesthesia. Then pathology. Then a facility fee from a building you thought was a doctor's office. The quote was the tip. The bill was the rest of the iceberg.
I am not shocked. When the price is split across several bills, nobody has to own the total. Nobody ever has to say the whole number out loud.
I am not anti-insurance. Keep a policy for the wreck. But a scheduled knee scope or a colonoscopy isn't a wreck. It's something you can plan, compare, and shop, if somebody will tell you the real price before you show up.
Direct care starts from the other end. One monthly fee. Labs and medications priced before you buy them. When we send a patient out for a procedure, we look for the places that quote one number that covers everything. The number on the door is the number you pay.
FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson told the companies to review their price disclosures and take swift corrective action. Fine. Patients have been getting the warning for years. It just usually arrives in the mail weeks after the procedure, in separate envelopes.
24 letters is a start. A price is the whole bill, or it isn't a price.