Opinion: Healthcare price transparency is here, yet nothing has changed

For years, patients have had a serious, very valid complaint about our health care system: It’s nearly impossible to know how much treatment actually costs. That’s why hospitals began posting their prices online in January, thanks to the Transparency in Coverage rule — a policy enacted by the Trump administration. Seema Verma, the then-administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, proclaimed that the rule would “usher in a new era that upends the status quo to empower patients and put them first.”