A 2025 report found that Americans using the health care system often do not know how much they will need to pay for care, despite laws requiring hospitals and health insurers to publish those prices in clear language and with accurate data.
The report, “Medical Debt Ecosystem: The Mechanized Wealth Extraction from America’s Patients“, showed that patients face hidden prices and fees and opaque billing practices. For the report, researchers from the George Washington University Law School, Patient Rights Advocate and Stanford Medicine showed that health care providers use hidden prices and arcane billing practices to establish an exploitative collection system that disadvantages lower-income Americans unprotected by Medicaid billing restrictions.