Trump signs executive order to enforce hospital price transparency rules

Editor's Note

President Donald Trump signed an executive order to enforce healthcare price transparency regulations, according to a February 25 report in Fierce Healthcare.

As detailed in the article, the order directs the Departments of Treasury, Labor, and Health and Human Services (HHS) to rapidly implement and enforce price transparency rules first issued in 2019, which require hospitals and insurers to disclose actual prices rather than estimates. The executive order also mandates comparable pricing across hospitals and insurers, including for prescription drugs, and updates enforcement policies to ensure compliance.

The Trump administration argues that transparent pricing will empower patients and employers to shop for the best quality care at the lowest cost, disrupting the current system that benefits large hospital and insurance corporations at patients' expense, Fierce Healthcare reports. The White House cited price disparities as justification for the order, citing examples such as a patient in Wisconsin saving $1,095 by comparing prices at two hospitals just 30 minutes apart.  

Effective January 1, 2021, the price transparency rule requires hospitals to post a machine-readable file of standard charges for all items and services and to display actual prices or provide a price estimator tool for at least 300 shoppable services. Insurance cost-sharing transparency rules became enforceable in July 2022, with additional requirements for listing shoppable services by January 2023 and a broader dataset by January 2024.

However, hospitals have been slow to comply. The full report offers additional context and history on the Federal response, as well as various statistics on compliance and details about the challenges.