A nonprofit patient rights advocacy group, PatientsRightsAdvocate.org (PRA), has stepped up its campaign urging President Donald Trump to take significant action on healthcare price transparency as the White House prepares to unveil its new healthcare proposal. This initiative comes amid heightened expectations for a potential healthcare plan that could reshape the system’s structure and affordability for American citizens. The group, a nonpartisan entity dedicated to fostering systemwide transparency and quality in healthcare, has placed its focus on enhancing cost disclosure to empower patients and curtail the dominance of corporate interests in the sector. In a letter to the White House, PRA founder Cynthia Fisher highlighted the critical need for greater transparency, asserting that direct patient empowerment is the most effective way to restore fairness, choice, and accountability to a system that has long favored corporate interests.
Specifically, Fisher has urged Trump to leverage the Department of Labor to ensure that employers who provide healthcare receive a comprehensive breakdown of claims, payments to providers, and service fees. This, she argues, would ultimately lead to lower costs for employees and more equitable access to services. Additionally, Fisher has encouraged the White House to back the Patients Deserve Price Tags Act, a bipartisan measure spearheaded by Senators Roger Marshall and John Hickenlooper. This legislation would require hospitals to disclose the actual prices of approximately 300 services and itemize each component of a bill, ensuring patients and employers can access transparent pricing data.
Fisher’s call to action underscores the group’s broader efforts to address the systemic issue of healthcare cost opacity, which has long been a source of public frustration. These efforts are building upon previous administrative measures, including an executive order signed by Trump in February. This order mandated the Treasury, Labor, and Health and Human Services departments to enforce transparency regulations that would require hospitals and insurers to share actual prices, rather than estimates. Additionally, the order called for measures to standardize healthcare pricing across different facilities and insurers, aiming to reduce the disparity in costs and improve patient outcomes.
The potential healthcare proposal comes at a critical juncture for the Trump administration, as it grapples with the complexities of extending subsidies under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which are set to expire at the end of 2025. This issue has posed a significant challenge during the funding negotiations that led to the government shutdown in October. Although Democrats initially resisted extending the ACA subsidies without additional provisions, they eventually supported a short-term spending bill that does not include permanent extension. Nevertheless, Senate Majority Leader John Thune has agreed to a December vote on legislation that would continue these credits, indicating a shift in the political landscape.
Public support for greater transparency remains robust, as evidenced by a September poll from Echelon Insights, a Republican-leaning firm, which found that nearly 90% of U.S. voters favor enforcing regulations that require hospitals and insurers to disclose exact prices upfront. The data, according to David Kochel, a Republican campaign strategist, signals a potential game-changer for the healthcare sector. By ensuring that hospitals and insurers reveal actual pricing, the administration could shift the narrative on healthcare, regain public trust, and deliver tangible results to voters. This initiative, if successful, could position the Trump administration as a leader in addressing one of the central pain points in the current healthcare system, namely surprise medical bills and opaque pricing structures.