President Trump signed an executive order Wednesday, designed to bolster old executive orders issued during his first term requiring hospitals to publish prices online. This is a rule that most hospitals are not compliant after five or more years.
In June 2019, Trump issued an executive order directing several federal departments to enact rules requiring hospitals to disclose prices that reflect what patients and insurance companies “actually pay” for services. The rules have been in effect since their inception in 2021.
The directive welcomed by healthcare access advocates is that hospitals are slow to adopt the requirements. Latest Hospital Price Transparency Compliance Report From the non-profit PatientSadvocate.org, published in November 2024, it was found that only 21.1% of hospitals reviewed were fully compliant. This represents a sharp decline from previous reports, when 34.5% of hospitals were fully compliant.
“Hospitals and health plans were not properly kept in their accounts if price transparency data was incomplete or not posted at all,” Trump wrote in the executive order. “The Biden administration has failed to take sufficient steps to fully implement my administration's requirements to end the uncertain nature of drug prices by publicly posting the true prices that health plans pay for prescription drugs.”
According to a November report on PatientRightSadvocate.org, the requirements that came into effect in 2024 essentially repeated the pricing transparency requirements by allowing estimates and averages rather than dollar and cent prices.
Trump addressed this with his order, saying hospitals must disclose “the actual price of items and services, not estimated.”
He further stated that the policy was “to put patients first and ensure the information needed to make informed medical decisions.”
To strengthen his rules, Trump's executive order called on the Treasury Secretary, Labor Secretary and the Department of Health and Human Services to “take all necessary and appropriate actions to promptly implement and implement transparent regulations on health prices.”
Appropriate measures defined in the executive order include the issuance of updated guidance to ensure that pricing information is standardized and hospitals are compliant with regulations.
