Consumers of health care in the United States often lack information on the actual prices of the care they receive and can also lack access to information about the quality of their care. In part, this can be attributed to the complexities of a system in which multiple payers often pay different prices for the same services. In June 2019, President Donald Trump signed an executive order called Improving Price and Quality Transparency in American Healthcare to Put Patients First in an effort to give consumers information about the price and quality of health care services to promote informed decisionmaking. To facilitate improvements in price and quality transparency, the administration is interested in informing policymakers and the public of ways in which the government and the private sector can aid or impede price and quality transparency. 

This report summarizes the results of an environmental scan designed to gather information on how health care prices are set, price variation in health care markets, barriers to price and quality transparency for consumers, and the extent to which price and quality information is used in marketing efforts. The report should be of interest to federal policymakers and stakeholders as they consider various price transparency initiatives, including recent federal rulemaking related to hospital and insurer price transparency. This work was conducted between October 2019 and December 2019.