Both parties in Congress are working to advance legislation on hospital price transparency before the August recess period as healthcare affordability is set to play a major role in voters’ decisions in 2026 midterm elections.
Committees in the House and Senate are each voting this week on bipartisan bills that would require hospitals to publicly post their prices for routine procedures, allowing patients to shop around for the most affordable care and thereby, in theory, putting downward pressure on healthcare costs.
Hospitals accounted for 31% of the nearly $5 trillion in healthcare spending in the United States in 2023, compared to 9% for prescription drugs and 20% for clinician services.
Hospital price transparency has been a goal of GOP health policy for nearly a decade. It’s also a rare instance of bipartisan agreement that has gotten more traction since healthcare costs became top of mind for voters ahead of this fall’s elections.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee is slated to consider, starting Monday, the Lower Costs, More Transparency Act, put forward by Chairman Brett Guthrie (R-KY) and ranking Democrat Frank Pallone of New Jersey. Likewise, the Senate health committee on Wednesday is reviewing the Patients Deserve Price Tags Act from Sens. Roger Marshall (R-KS) and John Hickenlooper (D-CO).
The bills are meant to address the insufficiencies of President Donald Trump’s two executive orders requiring hospitals to publicly post their prices, both for cash-pay as well as negotiated rates with insurance companies.
Trump’s first executive order in 2019 resulted in a federal Hospital Price Transparency Rule in 2021, requiring hospitals to provide both consumer-friendly price lists for standard services, such as x-rays or joint replacements, as well as more comprehensive machine-readable files.
Critics argue that the Biden administration did not sufficiently enforce the Trump-era rule, prompting a Trump executive order in 2025 to crack down on noncompliance.
Marshall said during a press call about his legislation, his goal was to “close the loopholes” and add a stiff penalty structure to enforce the policy.
The House and Senate versions of the hospital pricing bills require institutions to publicly list prices for routine, schedulable procedures instead of providing estimated calculations. Each of the bills also has a fine structure for hospitals, depending on their size, for noncompliance, and for the type of offense.
Guthrie and Pallone’s bill in the House starts the fines at $300 per day for hospitals with less than 30 beds and works up to $25 per bed per day for large hospitals with over 500 beds.
For perspective, the Mayo Clinic Hospital Saint Mary’s Campus in Minnesota, which has 1,265 beds, would be required to pay $31,625 for a single day of noncompliance with the price transparency policies.
Marshall’s bill also contains greater administrative oversight of price transparency between hospitals and health insurance plans, so employers and individuals purchasing health insurance can know the prices for procedures up front.
Marshall, an OB-GYN by training who was the CEO of a local hospital in Great Bend, Kansas, before becoming a politician, said the price transparency bill was intended mostly for procedures that can be scheduled in advance.
When asked by the Washington Examiner about complications during a routine procedure, such as an emergency cesarean section during a scheduled childbirth, Marshall said having prices listed up front for possible complications will also help patients determine where to get the best value for their money.
“So you’re coming in for a routine delivery, but at least we had the C-section price, or we know what the C-section price is,” he said.
Marshall also said more clarity in prices could be helpful in certain routine emergency situations, such as hip fractures, which would require listed prices for imaging studies, such as X-rays as well as corrective surgery.
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He also said, from the Senate side, his team “went through painstaking efforts with the White House to get this right.”
“I’m not saying this bill is perfect, but we’ve never made a bigger effort than we have on this bill to get it right,” Marshall said.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
