President Donald Trump once more called for greater price transparency from hospitals, this time as one of the four pillars of his Great Healthcare Plan.
If codified into law, the plan would “Require any healthcare provider or insurer who accepts either Medicare or Medicaid to publicly and prominently post their pricing and fees to avoid surprise medical bills.”
Trump previously pushed for such price transparency via executive orders (EO) in June 2019 and February 2025. The 2019 EO required “hospitals to publicly post standard charge information, including charges and information based on negotiated rates and for common or shoppable items and services, in an easy-to-understand, consumer-friendly, and machine-readable format.”
However, the requirements of the 2019 EO were “poorly enforced” by the Biden administration, which “failed to deliver usable information to patients,” says Ilaria Santangelo, the director of research at PatientRightsAdvocate.org.
Returning Power to Patients
“The Great Healthcare Plan builds on [Trump’s] original price transparency foundation by requiring healthcare providers and insurers to prominently post their pricing and fees in their place of business and to answer directly to patients up front about what they will be charged,” Santangelo told Health Care News.
“Rather than burying prices in massive data files or confusing disclosures, the goal is clear, upfront, patient-facing prices that people can actually rely on before receiving care,” said Santangelo. “This approach strengthens accountability, restores transparency, and rightly shifts power back to patients, where it belongs.”
Stopping Surprise Bills
In practical terms, greater price transparency, if made law, directly addresses the medical debt crisis faced by numerous Americans, says Santangelo.
“Today, roughly 100 million Americans carry medical debt, the leading cause of bankruptcy…” said Santangelo. “True price transparency would give patients the power to shop for the best care at the best price, helping them avoid surprise bills that arrive weeks or months after treatment.”
Congress: Patients Deserve Price Tags
At present, there is also bipartisan activity in Congress around price transparency, says Santangelo.
“Senators Roger Marshall (R-KS) and John Hickenlooper (D-CO) recently introduced the Patients Deserve Price Tags Act, a bipartisan bill that would require healthcare providers to publish the actual costs of services so patients can understand what procedures will cost before they receive care and compare prices across providers,” said Santangelo.
The bill, if passed, would build on and extend existing transparency rules by codifying stronger requirements into law, says Santangelo.
States Take Action
Additionally, several states have passed legislation codifying greater price transparency, says Santangelo, highlighting efforts in Colorado, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Nevada as examples.
These laws subsequently enabled PatientRightsAdvocate.org to develop price finder tools for Colorado, Ohio, and Oklahoma. Colorado and Oklahoma now prohibit medical debt collection by non-compliant hospitals.
There is also pending legislation in Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Kentucky, and Hawaii about which Santangelo says she and her colleagues at PatientRightsAdvocate.org are optimistic.
Health Care News has covered price transparency efforts in Ohio, as well as Florida,
Data Collection, Increased Costs
Will price transparency be transformative in reducing prices? Linda Gorman from the Independent Institute says the true purpose, outcome, and need for price transparency are not clear.
“Transparency has long been used as a Trojan horse to enable government-run health care advocates to get private information,” said Gorman, adding that the establishment of all-payer claims databases has done little more than “make individuals transparent to government planners” and “increase supplier costs.”
Obamacare Fallout
What has been termed “surprise billing” occurs, says Gorman, in the individual market, post-Obamacare.
“Before Obamacare, people had policies that were clear about how much out-of-pocket risk they took and what providers were in their network,” said Gorman. “Insurers competed on having broad networks. No one whined about transparency.”
“After Obamacare, insurers in the individual market had their profits controlled,” said Gorman. “Having a broad network attracted sicker people, and prices were controlled, so the only way to compete was by having networks that did not attract people who cared about health care quality. Then, we started having ‘surprise billing’ and huge deductibles and copays. Which is nothing more than people trying to get care outside of the skinny networks forced on them by Obama.”
Are Patients Shopping Around?
Moreover, Gorman says she questions how many people are comparing health care prices.
“The claim that consumers are out there searching for the best price ought to be given some thought before people condition policy on it,” said Gorman.
“Especially when current policy is to have as many people have ‘zero’ out-of-pocket costs,” said Gorman. “If my out-of-pocket costs are low to nil and my insurer only pays for treatment at X hospitals/doctors, I’m going to decide based on convenience. There is no point in shopping. If I am paying cash, I’ll search for cash prices. You can do this online. It’s transparent.”
This, though, becomes “trickier” for those who have insurance because providers may be bound contractually to charge a particular price.
“This was a problem [for] me in Colorado when the state required insurers to reimburse patients $90 for ‘covered’ mammograms,” said Gorman. “I had a $7000 deductible, and the charge for a mammogram under my insurance was $325. That left me $235 out of pocket after the state $90 reimbursement.”
On the other hand, “if I walked in and said I was paying cash, the cash price was $125,” said Gorman. “That gave me an incentive to shop and call around asking places for the cash price. Which they pretty much always quoted. So, no problem with transparency.”
Daniel Nuccio, Ph.D. ([email protected]) is a spring 2026 College Fix journalism fellow, reporter, and editorial associate for Health Care News.
