Both political parties have campaigned on the promise to “fix” healthcare for the last 20 years at least, but no one’s done anything about it.

Employers’ healthcare costs, for example, are expected to climb faster than inflation in 2023 and 2024. As a former employer myself, I know that these added costs for employers will be borne by customers, in the form of higher prices for goods and services, or employees, in the form of slow wage growth.

Voters know it, too. “Reducing healthcare costs” was the No. 2 problem for voters, according to a Pew Research poll conducted in February 2023 . Almost 90% of voters said a candidate’s plan for reducing the cost of healthcare would be important to them, and 39% even said they’d be willing to cross party lines to vote for someone whose top priority was lowering healthcare costs. This is something any politician, especially anyone seeking reelection, should be mindful of.

It’s clear Congress needs to get serious about confronting healthcare inflation. Soaring healthcare costs affect the average consumer more than many realize. As the price of care (paid by insurers) goes up, health insurance premiums (paid by employers) increase. Then, employers must decide whether to pass those added costs on to their employees or their customers.

Like gasoline, everyone consumes healthcare. So, if the price of healthcare goes up, it quickly affects the whole economy and every consumer, contributing to the inflation you see at the mall and in the grocery store.

How do we cut healthcare costs without hurting access or quality? It begins with cutting waste, fraud, and abuse in our healthcare system. I found one major area of waste: something called hospital dishonest billing. Dishonest billing is when a hospital secretly reclassifies an off-site doctor’s office as a hospital setting, charging patients up to 10 times the normal amount . Because hospitals are allowed to engage in these dishonest billing practices, it gives them an incentive to buy up independent doctors’ offices.

As hospitals buy up private practices, it fuels the consolidation of medical services, which experts say increases costs and decreases the quality of care. It’s happening more and more — the American Medical Association reports that the number of physicians employed at hospitals increased by roughly 50% between 2012 and 2020.

Because this wasteful billing practice is happening in secret, it is difficult to put a firm price tag on it. But for Medicare alone, analysts think that taxpayers spent $1.6 billion more than they would have if reimbursement rates for evaluation and management office visits in those off-site “hospital” facilities were the same for an office visit to an independent doctor’s office.

I’m not alone in these concerns. A bipartisan group in Congress agrees with me — we’ve got to do something to increase transparency.

My bill, the FAIR Act, introduced with Rep. Annie Kuster (D-NH), would end dishonest billing and force hospitals to bill accurately. Specifically, it would require off-site doctor’s offices owned by a hospital to use a separate and unique National Provider Identifier number and would require hospitals to categorize the site of service claims to payers correctly.

Not only would this apply to people who are insured through their employer, but it would also apply to Medicare and thus lower costs for taxpayers.

My legislation has been endorsed by employer groups and a bipartisan group of over 20 think tanks . It’s not a controversial idea that transparency will lower costs. Both sides of the aisle agree that opaque and secretive practices drive costs up and limit options for consumers.

It’s important to work across the aisle on a problem of this magnitude. Healthcare affects everyone, no matter their politics. And the FAIR Act is just the first step.

Kevin Hern is a U.S. representative for Oklahoma and serves on the House Ways and Means Committee.