Trump health care executive order means price, quality transparency: CMS administrator
President Trump on Monday signed an executive order that promises to empower patients and require hospitals to disclose their prices.
“This landmark initiative continues our work to put American patients first,” Trump said at the White House. “We are fundamentally changing the nature of the health care marketplace.”
The Department of Health and Human Services will propose a regulation requiring hospitals to publicly post standard charge information within 60 days. The executive order also requires the federal agency to ask for comments on expected out-of-pocket costs for items or services in 90 days and in 180 days, respectively, deliver a report addressing who is slowing down the efforts to have those prices transparent.
“This is all about the president’s bold leadership to put patients first and to empower them with price and quality transparencies so that they can make the decisions that are going to work best for them,” Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Seema Verma said Monday during an interview with FOX Business’ Kristina Partsinevelos.
Trump said he want to make sure there’s consistency and no one is overcharged for those procedures.
Despite several health care bills that have been introduced in Congress, Verma said not much has been done to ward off the rising cost of health care that has been to be prevalent over the past 10 years.
“What we want to do is create a more affordable, competitive marketplace where providers are competing for patients on price and quality,” she said on “Bulls & Bears."
The CMS administrator said it is important that hospitals have the capability of sharing their "breakdown" cost when patients are seeking health care services.
“The president wants us to go further so patients can make an apple-to-apple comparison with their seeking health care services,” Verma said.