Latest news with #PatientsDeservePriceTagsAct
Fox News
05-08-2025
- Health
- Fox News
EXCLUSIVE: Leading cause of bankruptcy being addressed by new ‘Make America Healthy Again' tool
FIRST ON FOX: Parental rights group American Parents Coalition is launching a new healthcare transparency tool for families they say will contribute to the Trump administration's "Make America Healthy Again" goals and target America's leading cause of bankruptcy. American Parents Coalition, which has previously made headlines for its advocacy on behalf of parents regarding gender identity issues, is now targeting medical debt by launching "The Lookout." The Lookout is a notification system texted directly to parents that helps them stay informed and offers guidance on how to advocate for themselves on behalf of healthcare price transparency to their members of Congress and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. A statement by the group shared with Fox News Digital explained the medical industry's lack of transparency about healthcare costs and significant variability in pricing has forced many American parents into the "unthinkable position of choosing between healthcare and other necessities." The group pointed to data gathered by KFF News that indicated over 100 million Americans – 41 percent of U.S. adults – hold medical debt they cannot pay. "Hidden costs and price variability exacerbate the issue, creating financial uncertainty and posing a significant barrier to medical care," the group said in the statement. American Parents Coalition praised recent actions by the Trump administration to increase medical price transparency, including a new Make America Healthy Again rule by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and an executive order signed in February. The order directed the Departments of the Treasury, Labor, and Health and Human Services to implement policies to "ensure hospitals and insurers disclose actual prices, not estimates, and take action to make prices comparable across hospitals and insurers, including prescription drug prices." The White House's fact sheet on the order claimed that healthcare costs could be lowered by an average of 27 percent on 500 common services by better shopping for care. The group also praised the bipartisan "Patients Deserve Price Tags Act," introduced by Senators Roger Marshall, R-Kan., and John Hickenlooper, D-Colo. According to the American Parents Coalition, their new tool will help parents navigate the changing landscape to best save on healthcare costs. "Americans can't get or stay healthy if they shy away from medical care due to price uncertainty," American Parents Coalition Executive Director Alleigh Marré told Fox News Digital. "A parent should be in the driver's seat of their child's health and safety," said Marré. "Expecting parents to make health decisions for their families with no information on costs can lead to unexpected medical expenses making it harder to plan for, recover from, and avoid financial strain," she said, adding, "No parent should ever feel like they must choose between medical care over necessities like food or clothing simply because they don't know what to expect."
The Hill
30-07-2025
- Health
- The Hill
Bipartisan Senate price transparency bill can fix US health care
In the aftermath of Republicans' divisive reconciliation bill, Congress has the opportunity to come together and pass bipartisan legislation to address one of the nation's biggest problems: The broken health care system. Approximately 100 million Americans have health care debt, and one-quarter of insured families avoid care each year due to unknown costs. The Patients Deserve Price Tags Act, recently introduced by Sens. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) and John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), can reverse runaway health care costs that are placing a tremendous burden on American families by empowering them to compare and save. Since 2000, hospital prices have increased by 257 percent, which explains why the growth rate in health insurance premiums has outstripped workers' earnings by a ratio of almost 3 to 1 over this timeframe. The Marshall-Hickenlooper bill gives employers and patients the upfront price information they need to protect themselves from overcharges and choose affordable care. It requires the publication of actual prices, including discounted cash and negotiated insurance rates, not estimates, throughout the health care system. And it requires insurers to give patients an advanced explanation of benefits —a breakdown of costs, including their out-of-pocket responsibility — before care is delivered. I joined a letter signed by 40 leading health economists calling on senators to co-sponsor and quickly pass this crucial legislation. Economists understand actual prices are essential to functioning marketplaces that generate fair-market costs. Under the opaque status quo, consumers are essentially required to pay for care with the equivalent of a blank check, giving hospitals and health insurers tremendous market power to overcharge and profiteer. Hidden prices result in wide cost variations for the same care, a sign of market failure. Recent research I conducted for Rice University's Baker Center reveals that mean outpatient hospital prices in Houston vary by nearly 200 percent for the same insurer. A recent study in Health Affairs Scholar shows that colonoscopy rates can vary by seven times for those with the same health coverage. Price transparency corrects this information asymmetry between consumers and providers, putting downward and convergent pressure on prices. It fosters competition and returns excessive health industry profits to patients, businesses, unions, school districts and workers where they belong. Redirecting funds from the health care industrial complex back to the private economy can create an enormous economic stimulus. Employers and employees especially stand to benefit. The average employer-sponsored family health insurance plan now costs $24,000 per year, with workers bearing the majority of the cost through premium deductions and lower wages. One analysis found that about the same amount of employee compensation growth since 2000 has gone to premium costs as to paychecks. Transparency empowers employers to steer workers to high-value care, reducing premium costs and increasing take-home pay. The Marshall-Hickenlooper bill also gives employers access to their claims data and reveals the contractual relationships of their health plan administrators, allowing them to remedy overbilling and spread pricing. My research suggests that lowering annual premiums by just $1,373 per employee can boost the profitability of retail businesses by an average of 12.4 percent. You don't need to be an economist to understand that upfront prices are needed to avoid overcharges and shop for affordable care and coverage. But economists can speak to the significant impact of price transparency on business earnings, worker paychecks and economic dynamism. Actual prices, as required by the Marshall-Hickenlooper bill, can restore affordability, accountability and trust to American health care. That's something people of all political persuasions can support.
