Employers Press Congress to Cement Health Price Transparency Before Trump’s Return
MedPage Today December 20, 2024
— The legislative step could help protect against future legal challenges
It seems simple: Require hospitals and insurers to post their negotiated prices for most healthcare services and — bingo — competition follows, yielding lower costs for consumers.
But nearly 4 years after the first Trump administration’s regulations forced hospitals to post massive amounts of pricing information online, the effect on patients’ costs is unclear. And while President Joe Biden added requirements to make pricing information more user-friendly, Donald Trump’s imminent return to the White House has raised questions about what’s next, even though posting prices is an area of rare bipartisan agreement.
The uncertainty of what might happen next led some proponents to lobby Congress to include hospital and...