State legislators introduced a new bill Friday that could make significant changes to treatment cost transparency for health care consumers.

Sen. Jim Sullivan, D-Wauwatosa, and Committee on Health and Healthcare Reform Chair Rep. Jon Richards, D-Milwaukee, put forth the Health Care Transparency Bill to help consumers “make informed decisions and choices concerning their health care,” said Richards spokesperson Brett Blomme.?

He said the bill would require health care providers to divulge the price of their services to a patient before the patient decides on treatment options.?

Other facets of the bill include a required list of the 25 procedures most commonly performed by health care providers, according to a statement released Friday by Sullivan. The new bill would also give consumers the right to receive a “good faith estimate” for the cost of treatments, including costs not covered by insurance.?

“The bill is about consumers and we want them to be able to make informed decisions and choices,” Blomme said.?

By making the disclosure of prices mandatory, competition will be increased among health care providers, the statement said. Health care providers will be forced to compete in both price and quality, which will allow consumers to look around to determine where the best value lies.?

“Nowhere else are people asked to purchase a product without knowing ahead of time how much it’s going to cost, and it should be the same with health care,” Sullivan said in the statement.

Blomme also said as more and more people have higher deductable health insurance plans, people have become more health conscious and willing to “shop around” for their health care needs.

Blomme added the lack of cost data information is harming consumers, and this bill would fix the current situation. Although consumers have benefited from the recent turn to high deductible health plans, he said the positive effects have been limited due to consumers’ inability to access a lot of information about health care service costs.?

The statement also said both Sullivan and Richards call not just for the availability of this information to the public, but also for it to be presented in a format that is simple for them to understand.

The next step in the process is for the bill to go to the chief clerk of Majority Leader Tom Nelson’s office, but Blomme said he was unsure of where it would end up after heading there.?

Rep. Robin Vos, R-Racine, a member of the Assembly Committee on Insurance, said he does agree with the concept of informing patients of treatment costs but said he is not confident in the proposal put forth by Sullivan and Richards.

“I agree with the idea of transparency, but I’m not so sure the model they put forth will work,” Vos said.

Although some aspects of the bill are controversial, Richards’ office said they were confident many people will really support this bill.?

?”People deserve to know the cost of their care. Period,” Sullivan added in the statement.?