President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday titled “Making America Healthy Again by Empowering Patients with Clear, Accurate, and Actionable Healthcare Pricing Information.”
The new order builds on historic efforts from Trump’s first term to enhance healthcare price transparency and aims to modernize and enforce regulations that have stalled under subsequent administrations.
The executive order directs the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Labor, and the Secretary of Health and Human Services to take all necessary measures to rapidly implement and enforce price transparency regulations first established under Executive Order 13877 of June 24, 2019.
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These regulations require hospitals and health plans to publicly display meaningful pricing information for up to 300 shoppable services, including actual negotiated rates and out-of-network payment amounts, so that patients can make well-informed healthcare decisions.
“During my first term, we took historic steps to correct the opaque pricing practices that burden American families,” the order states. “For far too long, patients, employers, and taxpayers have been left in the dark, subsidizing inflated healthcare costs that benefit powerful hospitals and insurance companies, not the American people.”
Key provisions of the executive order include:
- Disclosure of Actual Prices: Agencies are required to mandate the disclosure of actual prices for healthcare services, rather than estimates.
- Standardization and Comparability: New guidance must be issued to ensure that pricing information is standardized and easily comparable across hospitals and health plans.
- Enhanced Enforcement: Updated enforcement policies will be proposed to ensure compliance with transparent reporting requirements.
- Rapid Implementation: The responsible departments are directed to take action within 90 days to improve existing transparency requirements and identify further opportunities to empower patients with actionable price information.
Economic analyses have suggested that fully implementing these regulations could result in up to $80 billion in healthcare savings by 2025, with another report indicating that improved price transparency could help employers reduce costs by as much as 27 percent across 500 common healthcare services. Recent data shows that the top 25 percent of the most expensive healthcare service prices have dropped by 6.3 percent per year since the initial rollout of the transparency measures.
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The new order comes in response to concerns that the Biden administration failed to adequately enforce these measures, particularly the requirement for health plans to publicly disclose the true prices they pay for prescription drugs. By renewing the focus on transparency, the Trump administration aims to restore accountability in the American healthcare system and ensure that federal policies serve the best interests of patients.
“Making America healthy again will require that every patient has access to clear and accurate healthcare pricing information,” the order states. “This is a common-sense approach that will foster a more competitive, innovative, affordable, and higher quality healthcare system.”
The order also clarifies that it will be implemented consistent with applicable law and the availability of appropriations, and it does not create any new enforceable rights or benefits.
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