I know larger cities are the norm but everyone else is acting like everyone has a choice. My town has an urgent care center and a hospital that serves the entire county. The next nearest hospital is two hours away. Even then we still have people Life Flighted out to Spokane on a regular basis from both hospitals.
All transparency will do is put a number in front of my single choice.
This would allow you to choose your insurer based on rates and copays for common treatments - that could be a win even if there is only a single provider.
Furthermore, if other competing providers see room to compete on price because of transparency you might actually get more providers.
If your employer is of smaller size, they will have greater leverage to match rates with larger plans because of transparency which could help you a great deal. Further, your company could have leverage with their insurance broker to provide better pricing / options based on public data.
If you cared enough, it might influence your choice of employer. Also some employers offer plans from multiple insurers. At my current employer I can choose between a Kaiser HMO and a Cigna PPO.
Even in the high demand field of software engineering the vast majority of people don't have the option to choose between multiple jobs to take. You take what you can get. Not unlike healthcare in which you usually have no say in what healthcare you get when you need it.
I don't think this is true for non immediate care though. If you had something that needed to be done in a number of weeks would you be willing to to to a different hospital to save.. a couple hundred? A couple thousand?
Depends. I can travel to another city, but do I go home to recover after a multi-hour car ride or do I recover in that city? If I have an issue post operation does my home city have the resources to handle it? Who's going to drive me if I need a driver?
The only argument I've heard that this is harmful comes from self-interested industry groups saying, in essence, "we make more money if patients are uninformed." That settles it for me.
All transparency will do is put a number in front of my single choice.