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When he returns to office, President-elect Trump has an opportunity to fix America’s broken healthcare system by doubling down on its first-term agenda of price transparency for patients.
Instead of protecting American patients, the Biden administration has withdrawn or not fully implemented basic requirements that patients know the cost of their treatment before receiving it.
By finally removing the veil between them medical services and pricesTrump can enable patients to buy the right care at the right price, avoid excessive costs, and give employers and unions a better idea of ​​costs in advance so they can optimally design health benefits.
President-elect Trump speaks at AmericaFest, Sunday, December 22, 2024, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Rick Scooteri)
Reintroducing this reform should be at the top of the first 100 days of Trump’s agenda.
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Trump’s 2019 executive order to improve price and quality transparency in U.S. healthcare and the resulting price transparency rules for hospitals and health plans provided Americans with up-to-date pricing information about their medical services for the first time. Patients finally have the same information as the rest of the things they buy, noticing wide price variations of ten times or more for the same care and shopping around for affordable services.
Unfortunately, President Biden steadily undermined Trump’s transparency rules regarding hospitals, insurers and prescription drugs. Hospital price transparency was the first implementation and should be the most advanced.
Although the current government claims high compliance requirements from hospitals, the information provided by hospitals is often incomplete. In fact, a new survey from PatientRightsAdvocate.org shows that only 21.1% of hospitals nationwide are fully compliant and publish both their cash discount prices and all negotiated rates by health insurer and plan.
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The lack of enforcement has likely contributed to compliance moving in the wrong direction, with 34.5% of hospitals in compliance in February, compared to 21.1% of hospitals in compliance this fall. The Biden administration has facilitated this non-compliance by refusing to enforce the rule and issuing only fifteen fines to the thousands of non-compliant hospitals across the country.
The lack of enforcement is coupled with administrative actions that undermine these patient protections: The Biden administration has allowed hospitals to post price surrogates, including estimates, algorithms and percentages, instead of actual prices.
No consumer stores checking algorithms or percentages; they need prices for healthcare services just like any other service they consume. Only real prices allow consumers to choose the highest quality care at the lowest possible prices and unleash competition to reduce inflated costs.
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Estimates do not hold hospitals accountable if they saddle patients with excessively high final bills. And starting next year, the Biden administration will allow hospitals to continue hiding from transparency requirements so that hospitals only have to display one type of charge instead of all the negotiated rates required for shopping.
The Biden administration continues to neglect patients’ needs and has repeatedly delayed this President Trump’s demands for insurers to provide upfront prescription drug prices and detailed costs to patients through an advanced explanation of benefits, which patients can use to compare their out-of-pocket costs.
Trump can continue his first-term efforts by immediately strengthening and enforcing his price transparency rules upon taking office.
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That means reversing the Biden administration’s rollbacks and delays to ensure that hospitals must publish actual prices in dollars and cents for all their services and that insurers share the information patients need to get prescription drugs and medical buy care. And it means financial penalties are consistently imposed for non-compliance.
Patients urgently need transparent prices. Under the opaque status quo, U.S. health care costs have risen to 17.3% of the economy, nearly twice the developed world average. More than 100 million Americans have done so medical debtmany of whom face financial ruin from accounts whose underlying prices were unknown. These challenges exacerbate all efforts to improve American health.
These efforts aren’t just good for America’s health care: A group of 32 bipartisan economists, including Arthur B. Laffer and Steve Forbes, recently sent a joint letter to Congress explaining how system-wide price transparency could siphon roughly $1 trillion annually from the unproductive health care. industrial complex for the competitive economy, including workers’ wages and business revenues.
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A recent poll shows that 92% of Americans are in favor Healthcare price transparency. It’s clear that Americans of all political stripes are fed up with hidden health care costs and resulting massive bills that they could have avoided if prices were known in advance.
President Trump can unite these Americans and burnish his legacy by making healthcare price transparency a reality and ushering in an affordable and accountable healthcare system.
