Policy Brief Review The author of this report is to find and summarize a policy brief as it appears on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation website. As part of the review process, there will be a summary of several of its main points and objectives. These will include the policies and subjects covered, who the foundation is trying to influence, whether the brief is evidence-based, whether there are gaps in the knowledge base, what the expected outcomes might be, who those outcomes would affect, what the burdens would be, who those burdens would affect, what the benefits would be and who precisely would gain the most. While price transparency may not be seen as a major issue, the Foundation website assert that there is roughly $105 billion in annual waste due to price variations and an overall lack of price transparency.

Analysis

As explained by the policy brief, the problem is that the Institute of Medicine found out that there is roughly $105 billion in annual waste within the broader healthcare spending pie, as was briefly mentioned in the introduction. The brief asserts that there is a lack of public information on the price of healthcare services and this contributes to waste by denying employers, purchasers, and...

The billions in waste is directly attributed to the lack of competition and an excessive amount of price variations that are occurring for the same services. For example, something that may cost $100 one place may end up costing $250 another place and this variance is due to lack of transparency and pre-informing the parties involved about what things truly cost so that people can vote with their wallet as they see fit (RWJF, 2015).
The policy brief is clearly trying to influence the state and local governments to change or add regulations so as to preclude this price problem from continuing to propagate. State level solutions given include the prohibition of contractual gag clauses, the creation of all-payer claims databases, the plan requirement of exchange-participating vendors to provide price data, the requirement of plans in the state insurance marketplace to provide "calculators" and the prohibition of other anti-competitive practices. As for federal rules, they wish to assert employers' rights to access and use their own claims data as well as using financial incentives to encourage states to improve transparency (RWJF,…