In 2019, the 45th President Donald Trump issued an executive order to embed health pricing transparency into the medical industry. He announced it at a press conference that November. 

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We all know what happened. The election of 2020 and a President Joe Biden. Of course, as soon as Biden-Harris was installed in the White House, they dismantled the endeavor. Thanks to a win in the 2024 election, four years later, we have the 47th President Donald Trump back in office again. On Tuesday, Trump signed a new executive order empowering patients with the right to demand clear and accurate price transparency for their healthcare costs. 

During my first term, my Administration took historic steps to correct a fundamental wrong within the American healthcare system. For far too long, prices were hidden from patients and employers, with inadequate recourse available to individuals looking to shop for care or obtain pricing information from a healthcare provider in advance of a visit or procedure.  These opaque pricing arrangements allowed powerful entities, such as hospitals and insurance companies, to operate with insufficient accountability regarding their pricing practices, resulting in patients, employers, and taxpayers shouldering the burden of inflated healthcare costs.  

While signing the EO, Trump clarified how this EO not only re-established the directive he put into place above, but how this new EO had even more teeth.

It's one of the biggest things that can happen to reducing cost in healthcare. It takes a little while to kick in, but Biden ended it immediately upon coming in which was a terrible travesty in my opinion, and we're going to start it up and we've actually made it even stronger by a couple of major factors. 

It allows people to go out and negotiate a price. And you're not even allowed to talk about it when you go into a hospital or see a doctor. And this allows you to go out and talk about it. And it's actually one of the biggest... there's a couple of people, actually going back a long way, that feel that — the real pros in the industry feel this is the biggest thing you can do for cutting prices, and it certainly is one of 'em. And it's been unpopular in some circles because people make less money. But it's great for the patient, it's great for the people in our country, okay? It's not so good for.. it's not so good for pharmaceuticals, it's not so good for the companies that make the drugs, and I guess you can say it probably isn't so great for hospitals. But, they say if you have a great hospital that really knows what they're doing, it's actually great for hospitals, because everyone wants to go there. 

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From the February 25 Executive Order:

Pursuant to Executive Order 13877 of June 24, 2019 (Improving Price and Quality Transparency in American Healthcare to Put Patients First), my Administration issued paradigm-shifting regulations to put patients first by requiring hospitals and health plans to deliver meaningful price information to the American people.  These regulations require hospitals to maintain a consumer-friendly display of pricing information for up to 300 shoppable services and a machine-readable file with negotiated rates for every single service the hospital provides; health plans to post their negotiated rates with providers as well as their out-of-network payments to providers and the actual prices they or their pharmacy benefit manager pay for prescription drugs; and health plans to maintain a consumer-facing internet tool through which individuals can access price information. 

This EO places requirements on not only the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) but the Department of Labor (DOL) and the Treasury Department, to implement and enforce these transparency policies. 

Sec. 2.  Policy.  It is the policy of the United States to put patients first and ensure they have the information they need to make well-informed healthcare decisions.  The Federal Government will continue to promote universal access to clear and accurate healthcare prices and will take all necessary steps to improve existing price transparency requirements; increase enforcement of price transparency requirements; and identify opportunities to further empower patients with meaningful price information, potentially including through the expansion of existing price transparency requirements. 

The Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Labor, and the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall take all necessary and appropriate action to rapidly implement and enforce the healthcare price transparency regulations issued pursuant to Executive Order 13877, including, within 90 days of the date of this order, action to:

     (a)  require the disclosure of the actual prices of items and services, not estimates; 

     (b)  issue updated guidance or proposed regulatory action ensuring pricing information is standardized and easily comparable across hospitals and health plans; and

     (c)  issue guidance or proposed regulatory action updating enforcement policies designed to ensure compliance with the transparent reporting of complete, accurate, and meaningful data.

Here's a brief anecdote on why the DOL, in particular, must be incorporated into this.

I have paid out-of-pocket for maintenance medical services for decades. But with every new doctor and each medical office I have encountered, my choice not to use insurance for this has been a source of stress and consternation to them. Medical staff ONLY operate within the parameters of the medical-insurance industrial complex. When I informed them that I would be paying cash for specific labs and services, it threw the medical staff and often the doctors into a tizzy. Modern medicine is embedded with price codes from insurance companies, so much of the time, the doctor or staff person had no clue how much a certain lab or procedure would cost and had no idea how to look it up beyond the insurance codes. This is pathetic.

It only worsened when I moved to Alabama, where the medical industrial complex is akin to the Mafia. I am not kidding. From conversations with holistic practitioners, I have discovered that the Alabama medical industrial complex practically criminalizes alternative medicine or anyone who attempts to work outside their convoluted and draconian systems. When I went to a medical doctor's office to have a particular test performed, he had no clue what to do. When it was ascertained that he did not have a phlebotomist within the medical office to perform this very minute procedure, I was sent to the adjacent hospital to have it performed. Once at the hospital, the staffer there still had no idea what to do or what price to charge me. I had to sit in a cold and cramped office for 30 minutes while she figured out what to charge me and where to send me. When a price was finally established, I made the payment and went to the requisite department. Thankfully, the phlebotomist knew what he was doing because the procedure took less than 10 minutes, and he cogently and clearly explained the results, which were good. 

Two weeks later I received a bill for the procedure that was 10 TIMES the amount of what I had paid. Clearing this up took several calls and time on the phone with the main billing office, which was 200 miles away. I let them know that I had already paid out-of-pocket for the procedure and that they needed to remove the charge, which they did. However, imagine if it had been a complex medical procedure or surgery. This is what the average American goes through with the medical industrial complex, and too many have been burdened or bankrupted because of it. Trump restoring this price transparency requirement will go a long way to combat this unnecessary evil.

This is another MAHA victory and one that will help erode the systems that created the opaque leviathan that masquerades as the healthcare industry.