President Donald Trump has signed an executive order aiming to make healthcare costs more transparent for patients.
The ruling directs regulators to force healthcare providers and insurers to publicly disclose their prices, the idea being to make it easier for consumers to shop around for better deals.
The move marks a more aggressive approach to boost compliance with regulations Trump introduced in 2019, which providers have only half-heartedly been following.
Trump has long advocated for insurers to tell consumers up front the actual prices for common tests and procedures, believing it will drive down costs.
Healthcare prices have traditionally been veiled in secrecy, determined through private negotiations among doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and insurers.
Those involved have fiercely guarded these figures, arguing confidentiality is essential to the bargaining process.
Andrew Bremberg, former assistant to Trump and director of the Domestic Policy Council at the Trump White House, said in a statement: ‘This price transparency executive order is a major statement from President Trump. Healthcare price transparency will help millions of Americans and will be a cornerstone in President Trump’s healthcare legacy.’
However, insurance industry groups have argued regulations would have the opposite effect on costs and actually raise premiums.
President Donald Trump has signed an executive order aiming to impose price transparency on healthcare costs
Hospital groups claimed during Trump’s last presidency that declaring prices for every item and service they offer violated their First Amendment rights.
They claimed the policy would strip them of negotiating power to haggle prices with insurers. Despite the backlash he faced in the past, Trump pushed through with the order.
Trump’s first-term order for more price disclosure had limited success, with just 14 percent of hospitals were fully adhering to rules to publicly post their prices in 2022.
According to the White House, the newest order directs the departments of Treasury and Labor, as well as Health and Human Services to ‘rapidly implement and enforce the Trump healthcare price transparency, which were slow walked by the prior administration.’
This includes working to ensure hospitals and insurers disclose actual prices, not just estimates, and taking action to make prices more comparable across different hospitals and insurance companies.
The order also directs the departments to update their enforcement policies to make sure the entities are complying with the requirements.
Cynthia Fisher, the founder and chairman of PatientRightsAdvocate.org, said in a statement: ‘Real prices will forever transform the American healthcare system. Price transparency unleashes competition and shifts the power to the true purchasers of care — patients, employers, and taxpayers — allowing them to lower their costs and be protected from overcharges.
‘Why would anyone pay $3,000 for an MRI when they could get the same quality for $300? Likewise, no patient would agree to pay a $12,000 colonoscopy bill when the fair market price is around $1,000.’
Trump 2019 order imposed a $300-a-day fine that
Trump’s newest EO comes less than a week after he signed another order meant to expand access to and reduce costs of in vitro fertilization.
At the same time, he issued a presidential memorandum calling for ‘radical transparency requirements’ from the government, which he suggested could reduce wasteful spending.
In anticipation of questions about his administration’s efforts to slash federal spending, the president said he wrote down examples of government programs around the world which he then listed off at length.
He said he thinks ‘women and families, husbands, are very appreciative’ of his executive order on IVF, which offers a possible solution when a woman has trouble getting pregnant.
Barbara Collura, president and CEO of Resolve: The National Infertility Association, said that what the White House put out ‘looks extremely promising.’
‘The biggest barriers for people to building their families are the out-of-pocket costs, the lack of insurance coverage for this care,’ she said.
If Trump’s new health care rules withstand legal review, it’s unclear to what degree patients and their families will become a force reshaping the market.
Patients usually follow the recommendations of their doctors.
And people pick doctors by reputation, by word of mouth or from the lists of physicians who contract with their insurers.
The issue of health care price transparency started attracting more attention under the Obama administration, as then-HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius oversaw the disclosure of list prices charged by hospitals.
The Trump administration’s initiative drills down more deeply to try to get at the prices actually paid by insurers.
Many policy experts believe that high prices are a major driver of the nation’s chronic affordability problems with health care, which accounts for about 18 percent of the total economy, significantly burdening families, taxpayers and businesses.
