US Govt Empower Patients with Clear, Accurate, and Actionable Healthcare Pricing Information

Diplomat Foreign Desk
Washington DC: DD,The President of the United States of America, Donald Trump has empowered the patients with clear, accurate, and actionable healthcare pricing information.
As per the executive order signed by the President Trump, the administration took historic steps to correct a fundamental wrong within the American healthcare system.
“For far too long, prices were hidden from patients and employers, with inadequate recourse available to individuals looking to shop for care or obtain pricing information from a healthcare provider in advance of a visit or procedure,” reads the executive order.
It says that these opaque pricing arrangements allowed powerful entities, such as hospitals and insurance companies, to operate with insufficient accountability regarding their pricing practices, resulting in patients, employers, and taxpayers shouldering the burden of inflated healthcare costs.
Pursuant to Executive Order 13877 of June 24, 2019 (Improving Price and Quality Transparency in American Healthcare to Put Patients First), my Administration issued paradigm-shifting regulations to put patients first by requiring hospitals and health plans to deliver meaningful price information to the American people.
These regulations require hospitals to maintain a consumer-friendly display of pricing information for up to 300 shoppable services and a machine-readable file with negotiated rates for every single service the hospital provides; health plans to post their negotiated rates with providers as well as their out-of-network payments to providers and the actual prices they or their pharmacy benefit manager pay for prescription drugs; and health plans to maintain a consumer-facing internet tool through which individuals can access price information.
“One economic analysis from 2023 estimated the impact of these regulations, if fully implemented, could result in as much as $80 billion in healthcare savings for consumers, employers, and insurers by 2025,” the executive order asserts.
Meanwhile, in another report from 2024 suggested healthcare price transparency could help employers reduce healthcare costs by 27 percent across 500 common healthcare services. Recent data has found the top 25 percent of most expensive healthcare service prices have dropped by 6.3 percent per year following the initial implementation of price transparency during my first term.
Unfortunately, progress on price transparency at the Federal level has stalled since the end of my first term.
The hospitals and health plans were not adequately held to account when their price transparency data was incomplete or not even posted at all.
The Biden Administration failed to take sufficient steps to fully enforce my Administration’s requirement that would end the opaque nature of drug prices by ensuring health plans publicly post the true prices they pay for prescription drugs.
The American people deserve better. Making America healthy again will require empowering individuals with the best information possible to inform their life and healthcare choices. By building on the historic efforts of my first term, my Administration will make more meaningful price information available to patients to support a more competitive, innovative, affordable, and higher quality healthcare system.
It is the policy of the United States to put patients first and ensure they have the information they need to make well-informed healthcare decisions.
The Federal Government will continue to promote universal access to clear and accurate healthcare prices and will take all necessary steps to improve existing price transparency requirements; increase enforcement of price transparency requirements; and identify opportunities to further empower patients with meaningful price information, potentially including through the expansion of existing price transparency requirements.
Fulfilling the Promise of Radical Transparency. The Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Labor, and the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall take all necessary and appropriate action to rapidly implement and enforce the healthcare price transparency regulations issued pursuant to Executive Order 13877, including, within 90 days of the date of this order, action to: require the disclosure of the actual prices of items and services, not estimates; and issue updated guidance or proposed regulatory action ensuring pricing information is standardized and easily comparable across hospitals and health plans; and issue guidance or proposed regulatory action updating enforcement policies designed to ensure compliance with the transparent reporting of complete, accurate, and meaningful data.DD