A recent executive order seeks to reinforce price transparency rules for health care services put in place during the first Trump administration through pricing standardization and stricter enforcement policies.
President Trump signed the executive order on Feb. 25, which enforces a previous executive order signed by President Trump on June 24, 2019, mandating that hospitals provide “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.”
The current executive order also mandates that within 90 days of the date of the order, the Secretaries of the Treasury, Labor, and Health and Human Services must enforce the health care transparency regulations to:
- require the disclosure of the actual prices of items and services, not estimates;
- 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.
All provisions of the previous executive order still apply, including a requirement of health plans to post their negotiated rates with providers, their out-of-network payments to providers, and the actual prices they or their pharmacy benefit manager pay for prescription drugs. Additionally, health plans must maintain a consumer-facing internet tool where individuals can access price information.
Any questions related to hospital price transparency can be sent to PriceTransparencyHospitalCharges@cms.hhs.gov.
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