NASE News

Trump Administration Takes Additional Steps to Improve Health Care Pricing and Transparency

On Monday, June 24, President Trump signed an executive order directing his Administration to take additional steps to improve upon price and transparency in health care.

The executive order directs the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to develop a process for hospitals to publicly disclose how much patients will pay for services. Additionally, HHS will begin the process of making information on out-of-pocket spending more readily available to patients before they receive care.

The order also improves consumers’ incentives to shop for care by expanding the benefit of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and other tax-preferred health accounts, allowing for Americans to have more flexibility in how they pay for health care and associated costs.

These actions follow aggressive action by the Trump Administration to drive transparency within the health care industry. Previous action includes, the President signing legislation to end “gag” clauses that prevented pharmacists from letting patients know about potentially lower prices for drugs. Additional action targeting drug manufactures include requiring them to publicly disclose drug prices in their television ads.

This is of course in addition to the action the Administration has taken on Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs), a key legislative focus of the NASE for the past several years.