06-03-2025
Hospital price transparency bill dies in Wyoming Senate
CHEYENNE — Tuesday evening, the Wyoming Senate voted to kill House Bill 121, which would have required Wyoming hospitals to post prices for items and services in dollars and cents on their websites.
Some opponents of the bill expressed concern that it would harm Wyoming hospitals financially, particularly smaller, rural ones. Others said they opposed the bill in response to the Trump administration's executive order last week, which called for stricter rules and enforcement for hospitals to make prices more publicly accessible, with concerns the bill would make enforcement more confusing.
The concern for smaller hospitals stems from what some senators described as additional 'paperwork and red tape' they would be required to handle.
In a House committee meeting in February, Wyoming Hospital Association President Eric Boley, who opposed the bill, estimated that implementing this transparency software could cost a facility between $10,000 and $15,000 each year.
'Why do we do these things? When we've got good, successful health care programs, some of them struggling, why do we add this additional obligations when it's something we can do without,' Sen. Dan Dockstader, R-Afton, said.
Supporters of the bill, however, said this legislation would have helped the state comply with the federal regulations and given the state more control.
Sen. Charles Scott, R-Casper, said that hospitals, no matter the size, will now be required to comply with the transparency rules, regardless of HB 121, due to the executive order. He urged his colleagues to continue to support the legislation, advocating for the advantages of enforcing a federal act on the state level.
(PRA) is a health care price transparency advocacy group that has been vocal in its support for bills like HB 121 across the nation. PRA founder and chairwoman Cynthia Fisher issued a statement following the Senate vote Tuesday evening.
'Each of the 16 senators who voted against HB 121 willingly turned their backs on thousands of Wyoming patients and families,' Fisher wrote. 'They had a chance to follow President Trump's lead and take bold action to give every health care consumer in Wyoming access to upfront prices, protection from overcharges, and a more transparent system. Instead, they shamefully betrayed their constituents to placate special interests. These senators put profits over patients. Despite this disappointing setback, the fight for real hospital prices will go on in Wyoming and across our entire country.'
Senators narrowly voted to kill the bill, with 16 opposed, 14 in favor and one excused.
The bill was sponsored by Rep. Daniel Singh, R-Cheyenne.
Rep. Daniel Singh, R-Cheyenne (2025)
Rep. Daniel Singh, R-Cheyenne
Despite previously voting on this legislation, Sen. Gary Crum, R-Laramie, excused himself Tuesday due to a potential conflict of interest with his role as chairman of the board of directors of Ivinson Memorial Hospital in Laramie.
A controversial amendment
On Monday, Crum voted in favor of an amendment to the bill to exclude public hospitals from the transparency requirements, which includes Ivinson.
The amendment was put forward by Sen. Lynn Hutchings, R-Cheyenne, and also reduced the daily fine for facilities not in compliance from $1,000 to $500. That amendment passed.
Senate President Bo Biteman, R-Ranchester, said he believed this amendment defeated the purpose of the bill.
'We're not going to be bankrupting these hospitals. They would be bankrupting themselves by not being in compliance,' he said Monday. 'So it's their choice to follow this act or not.'
Sen. Gary Crum addresses Senate
Sen. Gary Crum, R-Laramie, addresses the Senate during the first day of the 68th Wyoming Legislature's general session on Jan. 14 at the state Capitol in Cheyenne.
Crum spoke in favor of the amendment on Monday, criticizing HB 121 as a 'feel-good bill' as originally written.
'This isn't controlling cost. It's going to add to the confusion, because we've got the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and now you've got a new presidential order coming in, which we don't know exactly what's in that and how that's going to be interpreted,' he said. 'And now we're going to put this (bill) into the mix, and so we're going to make all these rules and put everybody against each other.'
The executive order gives health care facilities 90 days to disclose actual prices of items and services, not estimates. It will be enforced by the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Labor and the Secretary of Health and Human Services on the federal level.
Current transparency
Some lawmakers who voted against the bill, including Sen. Bill Landen, R-Casper, and Sen. Wendy Schuler, R-Evanston, said prices are already readily available at their local facilities when they need it.
PRA publishes a semi-annual hospital pricing transparency report, which analyzes whether hospitals are in compliance with existing federal price transparency regulations. The report reviewed around 2,000 hospital websites. Published in November 2024, before Trump's executive order, PRA found that only 21.1% (421 hospitals) were compliant, none of which were in Wyoming.
Since then, Cheyenne Regional Medical Center has become the only hospital in Wyoming to meet those transparency requirements.
Fisher spoke with the WTE on Tuesday before the Senate killed HB 121. She said that greater transparency would lower the overall cost for consumers by allowing them to shop around at different health care facilities to compare the cost of services, ultimately driving costs down across the board.
'It behooves the smaller and rural hospitals to attract patients by having far more competitive prices,' she said. 'And the reality is these hospitals already have to have this data in electronic form in order to bill every single day. So, there's no burden. They already have these prices. All they need to do is pull back the curtain and show them.'
Despite the federal executive order, she advocated for the original language of HB 121 to enforce transparency regulations sooner in Wyoming and prevent state law from being in conflict with the executive order by exempting certain institutions from the transparency requirements.
