President Donald Trump issued an executive order on Tuesday directing the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Labor, and the Department of Treasury to “rapidly implement” price transparency regulations regarding healthcare costs for American citizens.
A fact sheet released on Tuesday by the White House explained that under Trump’s executive order, “The departments will ensure hospitals and insurers disclose actual prices, not estimates, and take action to make prices comparable across hospitals and insurers, including prescription drug prices.”
The White House claimed that while Trump’s first administration implemented “paradigm-shifting regulations” that required hospitals and health plans to “deliver meaningful price information,” the transparency regulations were “slow walked by the prior administration.”
In Tuesday’s executive order, Trump pledged to build upon the “historic efforts” of his first administration and “make more meaningful price information available to patients to support a more competitive, innovative, affordable, and higher quality healthcare system.”
Addressing the new executive order, Trump said, “Our goal was to give patients the knowledge they need about the real price of healthcare services.” The president explained that the executive order will allow Americans to check the prices of various healthcare services, compare them with different healthcare providers, and “shop for the highest-quality care at the lowest cost.”
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“And this is about high-quality care,” Trump added. “You’re also looking at that. You’re looking at comparisons between talents, which is very important. And then, you’re also looking at cost. And, in some cases, you get the best doctor for the lowest cost. That’s a good thing.”
According to the executive order, the Trump administration’s regulations will require U.S. hospitals to provide a “consumer-friendly display of pricing information” for as many as 300 “shoppable services” and a file containing the negotiated rates for “every single service” provided by the hospitals.
The White House fact sheet argued that when the cost of healthcare services is “hidden” from the American people, hospitals and insurance companies “benefit at the expense of American patients.” The White House claimed that price transparency will result in lower healthcare prices and will help both patients and employers “get the best” healthcare deal.
The White House also pointed to an economic analysis that indicated the president’s original price transparency regulations could lead to $80 billion in savings for consumers, employers, and insurers by 2025 if the regulations were “fully implemented.”
