Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) is rallying support for his and Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-VT) Health Care PRICE Transparency Act 2.0 (S. 3548) to combat the country’s soaring hospital costs, purportedly driven by provider consolidation and exacerbated by widespread pricing ambiguity in the industry.
The bipartisan duo’s landmark price transparency bill, positioned as a comprehensive successor to the House-passed Lower Costs, More Transparency Act (H.R. 5378), would require hospitals, clinical diagnostic laboratories, imaging service providers, and ambulatory surgical centers to publicly disclose detailed pricing information for all their services in a consumer-friendly format.
Under the legislation, the HHS secretary would be responsible for setting up and monitoring compliance procedures and enforcing penalties for violations.
The Health Care PRICE Transparency Act 2.0 is currently stalled in the Senate’s health committee, and it remains unclear when Sanders will schedule a markup. Braun called for movement on the legislation during a Senate Aging Committee hearing Thursday (July 11).
âI look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to get the Health Care Price Transparency Act 2.0 to the President’s desk,â Braun, the Senate Aging Committee’s ranking Republican, said in his opening statement. âIt is time to deliver for our seniors, families and Americans all across the country.â
Health care spending in America, notoriously more than twice those of peer nations despite having no better health outcomes to show for it, accounted for 17.3% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2022 and is expected to reach nearly 20% in 2032, according to the latest estimates from the National Health Expenditure Accounts (NHEA).
During the Senate Aging Committee’s health care transparency hearing, Braun said that steadily rising costs are due to the health care industry pretending to be part of a ‘free enterprise’ system, which should promote transparency and competition. But these principles donât apply to todayâs industry, he said.
Federal law already requires hospitals to post all prices online in an accessible format. But as of March 2024, only 34.5% of the 2,000 sampled hospitals are fully compliant with these regulations, according to a new ‘health care price transparency’ report unveiled by Braun on the same day as the hearing.
“Our bill puts the power back in the hands of Americans,” Braun said during the hearing. “It starts to make it consumer-driven, and it starts to break up the oligopoly — the monopoly, nearly — of how health care is provided.”
Thursday’s transparency hearing follows several letters from health care coalitions sent last month, urging the Senate Finance Committee to advance the site-neutrality and honest billing provisions in the Lower Costs, More Transparency Act — which passed the House last December with sizable bipartisan support but has since stalled in the upper chamber.
Although Thursday’s hearing was held by a different committee than requested, it’s still important that multiple committees are discussing health care costs and transparency, according to Darbin Wofford, a senior health policy advisor at the left-leaning Third Way.
The Senate Aging Committee had been planning its own price transparency hearing for quite some time, and itâs significant that committee Chairman Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) is also a member of the Senate Finance and health committees, Wofford added.
The nonprofit think tank, Third Way, was one of many organizations that signed onto multiple coalition letters as part of an organized pressure campaign for Senate action on the House-passed transparency bill.Â
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the House’s full transparency package would save taxpayers $715 million from 2024 to 2033. Most of the bill’s transparency measures, which mandate an ‘estimated amount of cost-sharing of prices’ instead of the actual list prices, wouldn’t impact the budget because they essentially codify existing requirements, according to CBO.
The only transparency provision that would save taxpayer money is the one requiring off-campus hospital outpatient departments to have a separate provider identification number, as this would help insurers who have a policy of not paying for hospital facility fees for off-campus providers and might encourage more insurers to adopt similar policies, the CBO said March 22 in response to questions submitted for the record from the House Energy & Commerceâs health panel members.
Sophia Tripoli, senior director of health policy at Families USA and a witness at Thursday’s hearing, told Inside Health Policy afterward that the Senate’s price transparency bill improves on the House-passed bill by requiring negotiated rates to be presented in dollar amounts and increasing fines for non-compliance.
The witnesses at the hearingâincluding industry experts, a consumer advocate, and a former state health care administratorâargued that health care monopolies, especially those owned by private equity firms, exploit the industry’s lack of price transparency to inflate costs and degrade the quality of patient care.
Chris Whaley, the associate director of the Center for Advancing Health Policy through Research, said during the hearing that over 2,000 hospital mergers have occurred in the country over the past two decades.
The witnesses collectively urged Congress to enhance employers’ and unions’ access to health care claims data, increase transparency in health care provider ownership, and address anti-competitive contract terms between providers and insurersâall provisions outlined in Sens. Braun and Sanders’ bill.
Zach Riddle, Braun’s communications director, told IHP in a written statement on Thursday that the primary focus is garnering member support for the legislation while evaluating any opportunities to advance the bill as they become available.
Senators Eye Landmark Transparency Bill To Combat Rising Hospital Costs, Industry Noncompliance
bgov.com
July 16, 2024 9:57 am
Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) is rallying support for his and Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-VT) Health Care PRICE Transparency Act 2.0 (S. 3548) to combat the country’s soaring hospital costs, purportedly driven by provider consolidation and exacerbated by widespread pricing ambiguity in the industry.
The bipartisan duo’s landmark price transparency bill, positioned as a comprehensive successor to the House-passed Lower Costs, More Transparency Act (H.R. 5378), would require hospitals, clinical diagnostic laboratories, imaging service providers, and ambulatory surgical centers to publicly disclose detailed pricing information for all their services in a consumer-friendly format.
Under the legislation, the HHS secretary would be responsible for setting up and monitoring compliance procedures and enforcing penalties for violations.
The Health Care PRICE Transparency Act 2.0 is currently stalled in the Senate’s health committee, and it remains unclear when Sanders will schedule a markup. Braun called for movement on the legislation during a Senate Aging Committee hearing Thursday (July 11).
âI look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to get the Health Care Price Transparency Act 2.0 to the President’s desk,â Braun, the Senate Aging Committee’s ranking Republican, said in his opening statement. âIt is time to deliver for our seniors, families and Americans all across the country.â
Health care spending in America, notoriously more than twice those of peer nations despite having no better health outcomes to show for it, accounted for 17.3% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2022 and is expected to reach nearly 20% in 2032, according to the latest estimates from the National Health Expenditure Accounts (NHEA).
During the Senate Aging Committee’s health care transparency hearing, Braun said that steadily rising costs are due to the health care industry pretending to be part of a ‘free enterprise’ system, which should promote transparency and competition. But these principles donât apply to todayâs industry, he said.
Federal law already requires hospitals to post all prices online in an accessible format. But as of March 2024, only 34.5% of the 2,000 sampled hospitals are fully compliant with these regulations, according to a new ‘health care price transparency’ report unveiled by Braun on the same day as the hearing.
“Our bill puts the power back in the hands of Americans,” Braun said during the hearing. “It starts to make it consumer-driven, and it starts to break up the oligopoly — the monopoly, nearly — of how health care is provided.”
Thursday’s transparency hearing follows several letters from health care coalitions sent last month, urging the Senate Finance Committee to advance the site-neutrality and honest billing provisions in the Lower Costs, More Transparency Act — which passed the House last December with sizable bipartisan support but has since stalled in the upper chamber.
Although Thursday’s hearing was held by a different committee than requested, it’s still important that multiple committees are discussing health care costs and transparency, according to Darbin Wofford, a senior health policy advisor at the left-leaning Third Way.
The Senate Aging Committee had been planning its own price transparency hearing for quite some time, and itâs significant that committee Chairman Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA) is also a member of the Senate Finance and health committees, Wofford added.
The nonprofit think tank, Third Way, was one of many organizations that signed onto multiple coalition letters as part of an organized pressure campaign for Senate action on the House-passed transparency bill.Â
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the House’s full transparency package would save taxpayers $715 million from 2024 to 2033. Most of the bill’s transparency measures, which mandate an ‘estimated amount of cost-sharing of prices’ instead of the actual list prices, wouldn’t impact the budget because they essentially codify existing requirements, according to CBO.
The only transparency provision that would save taxpayer money is the one requiring off-campus hospital outpatient departments to have a separate provider identification number, as this would help insurers who have a policy of not paying for hospital facility fees for off-campus providers and might encourage more insurers to adopt similar policies, the CBO said March 22 in response to questions submitted for the record from the House Energy & Commerceâs health panel members.
Sophia Tripoli, senior director of health policy at Families USA and a witness at Thursday’s hearing, told Inside Health Policy afterward that the Senate’s price transparency bill improves on the House-passed bill by requiring negotiated rates to be presented in dollar amounts and increasing fines for non-compliance.
The witnesses at the hearingâincluding industry experts, a consumer advocate, and a former state health care administratorâargued that health care monopolies, especially those owned by private equity firms, exploit the industry’s lack of price transparency to inflate costs and degrade the quality of patient care.
Chris Whaley, the associate director of the Center for Advancing Health Policy through Research, said during the hearing that over 2,000 hospital mergers have occurred in the country over the past two decades.
The witnesses collectively urged Congress to enhance employers’ and unions’ access to health care claims data, increase transparency in health care provider ownership, and address anti-competitive contract terms between providers and insurersâall provisions outlined in Sens. Braun and Sanders’ bill.
Zach Riddle, Braun’s communications director, told IHP in a written statement on Thursday that the primary focus is garnering member support for the legislation while evaluating any opportunities to advance the bill as they become available.