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Increasing price transparency was part of a "four shifts" agenda Azar laid out for transforming U.S. healthcare into a more competitive, value-based system that costs less. But he faces a hard slog to make prices and out-of-pocket costs public, particularly since many providers and pharmaceutical companies have resisted even while saying they support the concept. They argue it's the job of health plans to tell their members how much they will owe.In addition, experts say the cost-reduction potential of greater price transparency is limited because only a small percentage of total U.S. healthcare spending is on services for which patients truly can comparison shop. (Meyer, 3/19)

In his short time on the job, [Alex] Azar has embraced many of Obama’s objectives around lowering costs and improving quality, but with a Trumpian impatience to upend the established order. He called recent experiments to bring down costs “lackluster” and declared his intention to “fundamentally reorient how Medicare and Medicaid pay for care." Those programs spent $1.2 trillion in 2016. Add in private health plans, which often follow Medicare’s lead, and the health sector accounts for 18 percent of the U.S. economy. (Tozzi, 3/21)