Latest news with #priceTransparency
Fox News
17 hours ago
- Business
- Fox News
NEWT GINGRICH: Pay less, know more — Trump is slashing red tape and lowering your healthcare costs
One of the boldest and most consistent themes in President Donald J. Trump's healthcare agenda is his determination to reduce the role and power of middlemen. From insurance companies to pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) – and even hospitals –these intermediaries profit from the inefficiencies of our bloated health system. The result is higher costs for American families. As I explain in my new book, "Trump's Triumph: America's Greatest Comeback," the U.S. healthcare system isn't expensive just because care is costly. It's expensive because the system is complex – by design. The third-party payment structure, whether public or private, adds layers of bureaucracy. This opens the door for middlemen to offer supposed solutions that serve their own bottom lines – not patients. It's a vicious cycle: more rules lead to more middlemen, which lead to even more rules, red tape, and rising costs. President Trump understood this – and he took action. In his first term, he issued a groundbreaking executive order on price transparency. For the first time, hospitals were required to disclose the real cost of procedures, enabling patients to compare prices before receiving care. While the Biden administration weakened enforcement, Trump doubled down in his second term with an even stronger push for what he called "radical transparency." Radical transparency is the antidote to healthcare's worst inefficiencies. When patients and employers can see wide price differences for the same procedures – even within the same hospital system – the games played behind the scenes get exposed. These inflated prices often have little to do with quality and everything to do with how well insurers negotiate – or how many middlemen take a cut. The same is true for prescription drugs. PBMs – giant corporations that control which drugs are covered and at what cost – use their market power to inflate prices. Three PBMs control 80 percent of the market. They're often subsidiaries of major insurers, forming vertically integrated monopolies. New data from the Pacific Research Institute shows that most PBMs skim more money off high-cost prescriptions than European countries charge. It's no wonder Americans are paying more. Hospitals play a role as well. Many exploit a well-intentioned federal program known as 340B, which allows them to purchase drugs at steep discounts. Instead of passing the savings to patients, they bill insurers full price and pocket the difference. The program was meant to expand care for low-income patients, but there's little oversight to ensure this happens. President Trump's recent executive order on drug pricing targets this broken system. By creating a pathway for manufacturers to sell directly to patients, health plans, pharmacies, and clinics – without the markup – he's offering a way to bypass the middlemen. This isn't theory – it's already working. When insulin makers launched direct-to-consumer programs, they sold the same drug at one-fourth the price patients were paying through insurance – while still making a profit. That's the power of real market competition – without a single government price control. This stands in sharp contrast to the Left's top-down vision. Whether it's price controls, centralized purchasing, or government-run insurance, the left's answer is always more bureaucracy. But more bureaucracy means more complexity – and more room for middlemen to thrive. Perhaps the most visionary part of President Trump's health care agenda is his call to Make America Healthy Again. For decades, we've operated a "sick care" system focused on treating illness after it strikes. Trump's approach is different. It emphasizes prevention, lifestyle, and personal responsibility – turning Americans from passive recipients into active participants in their own health. In this model, the government's role isn't to run the system but to create an environment in which patients and doctors can lead – with access to better tools, more transparency, and useful information. That means clearer labeling for ultra-processed foods, ensuring gold standard scientific data free of conflicts of interest, and addressing environmental factors that contribute to chronic disease. These kinds of structural reforms empower people to make informed choices and live healthier lives – without mandates or micromanagement. It's a model that eliminates the ultimate middleman: the system itself. President Trump's leadership has laid the groundwork for a transparent, patient-centered, free-market healthcare system. But the job isn't done. Congress should join him in continuing this fight – not just to lower costs, but to restore power to the American people. America deserves a healthcare system that benefits Americans – not industry middlemen.
The Independent
13-05-2025
- Business
- The Independent
Ticketmaster to make key changes following criticism
Ticketmaster will now display all-in ticket prices upfront, complying with a new federal rule banning hidden "junk fees." This change, effective Monday, is part of the former Biden administration's broader effort to increase price transparency in industries like ticketing, hospitality, and vacation rentals. Ticketmaster claims to have supported all-in pricing for a while and will also provide queue updates and ticket availability information to customers. SeatGeek, another ticketing platform, has also adopted all-in pricing as the default setting. This move follows recent scrutiny of Ticketmaster, including a lawsuit by the US Department of Justice alleging monopolistic practices and an executive order by Donald Trump aimed at curbing ticket scalping.
Fox News
12-05-2025
- Health
- Fox News
Trump's healthcare order will help fix healthcare for everyone
One of President Donald Trump's most significant achievements during his first 100 days in office was his executive order requiring "radical" healthcare price transparency. The order doubles down on his first-term hospital and health insurance price transparency rules requiring the publication of actual prices of care and coverage, including discounted cash and negotiated insurance rates. This information protects patients from overcharges and empowers them to reduce inflated costs through choice and competition. The executive order requires the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Department of Labor (DOL), and the Department of the Treasury to issue rules strengthening, standardizing and enforcing systemwide price transparency by the end of this month. Trump's healthcare price transparency effort will revolutionize healthcare and the entire economy. It's a pro-worker, pro-growth, free-market policy to boost worker paychecks and business earnings. When employers and unions can access actual prices throughout the healthcare system, they can spot wide price variations for the same care, expose middle players driving up costs and design affordable health plans. They can share their savings with workers in the form of lower premiums and higher wages. Under the status quo, healthcare is fundamentally un-American. It is the only economic sector where consumers cannot see real prices before they buy. No functioning market can exist under these conditions. As a result, prices for the same care can range by 10 times, even at the same hospital. For instance, C-sections vary from $6,000 to $60,000 and MRIs from $450 to $6,500. That isn't a marketplace — it's Russian Roulette that allows Big Health to profiteer off patients' misery. For decades, health insurers have hidden prices and claims information, facilitating spread pricing that robs workers and employers. Employer-sponsored family health plans now cost $25,600 annually and increase by double-digits each year. Research shows that about the same amount of compensation gains for average workers since 2000 has gone to premiums as paychecks, a major cause of wage stagnation. Unfortunately, hospitals and health insurers haven't complied with Trump's first-term rules. According to a recent study by only 21.1% of hospitals nationwide are fully complying with the hospital rule. The Biden administration didn't meaningfully enforce the rule, issuing only 25 financial penalties on the thousands of hospitals that didn't comply. Biden also rolled back the rule, allowing the posting of unaccountable estimates in lieu of actual prices needed to shop. And health insurers have buried their data disclosures in massive files full of meaningless "ghost codes" that crash computers and are nearly impossible to parse. Trump's new order increases enforcement to boost compliance, requires actual prices — not estimates — so patients can shop with financial certainty, expands transparency requirements throughout the healthcare system, and standardizes data disclosures, so consumers can make meaningful price comparisons. It gives people prices before they receive care. Trump's order will also enact overdue requirements for health insurers to provide Advanced Explanations of Benefits (AEOBs), required by the bipartisan No Surprises Act that passed at the end of 2020. AEOBs let patients know exactly what they'll owe — including their out-of-pocket patient responsibility — giving them financial peace of mind. Under the status quo, healthcare is fundamentally un-American. It is the only economic sector where consumers cannot see real prices before they buy. They also empower employers and unions to audit their health plans and verify claims payments match provider bills and posted prices. Employers and unions can then eliminate spread pricing that — as the New York Times reported last year — often requires their health plans to pay far more to middle players than providers. Drawing on a JAMA study concluding that 25% of U.S. healthcare spending ($4.9 trillion in 2023) is waste, overcharges, and fraud, economists estimate systemwide price transparency can generate approximately $1 trillion of savings. Putting $1 trillion a year in overbilling back into the productive economy, including worker paychecks and business investment, will result in an enormous annual economic stimulus. Healthcare price transparency is the most important microeconomic reform in American history. It creates a functional, competitive marketplace that restores choice, accountability and trust. When prices are clear, markets work. When markets work, costs fall. And when costs fall, wages rise. President Trump's executive order — and the ensuing federal rules issued later in May —will finally make healthcare price transparency a reality. They will solidify Trump's legacy as the president who fixed American healthcare. Cynthia A. Fisher is a life sciences entrepreneur, and founder and chairman of
South China Morning Post
09-05-2025
- Health
- South China Morning Post
Will private Hong Kong hospitals set high fee estimates to avoid explaining bill?
Hong Kong's private hospitals may provide higher fee estimates to avoid having to explain cost blowouts in patients' final bills under an official proposal aimed at improving price transparency, lawmakers have warned. Advertisement But Secretary for Health Lo Chung-mau on Friday dismissed the concerns and said private operators would not want to scare away patients by setting very high price expectations. He also vowed to ensure penalties would act as effective deterrents under the legislative proposals targeting the private healthcare sector. The Health Bureau earlier this week put a range of measures to the Legislative Council for discussion, including a requirement for private hospitals to give price estimates and a written explanation to patients or their family members if the final bill for procedures was significantly higher, such as 20 per cent or more than the expected amount. But lawmakers raised doubts about how the government would ensure the rights of patients were protected. Advertisement 'Private hospitals might include potential stays in the intensive care unit in the fee estimates for operations that are a bit more complicated,' legislator Rebecca Chan Hoi-yan said.
South China Morning Post
08-05-2025
- Health
- South China Morning Post
How does Hong Kong plan to make private hospital fees more transparent?
Hong Kong's health authorities proposed a raft of measures to improve price transparency among private hospitals and clinics earlier this week, in a bid to attract more people to use their services and relieve pressure on the public sector. Advertisement The Post looks into why the government is taking a bolder approach to the local private healthcare sector. 1. What are the concerns about price transparency? The Consumer Council earlier criticised private hospitals for their lack of transparency when it came to pricing information and charging mechanisms, and published a study in March that looked into the problems faced by patients. The consumer watchdog also said that not all day procedure centres disclosed their prices online, and the information they did share was often not very comprehensive. The information provided by the private hospitals could also be difficult for ordinary consumers to understand, according to the council. Advertisement There were also discrepancies in prices for the same type of treatment in different private hospitals. For example, the bill for surgery for removing haemorrhoids varied from HK$33,881 (US$4,370) to HK$85,387.
