Yesterday, President Trump signed an executive order that bolstered a previous order from 2019 that calls on the Secretaries of the Treasury, Labor, and Health and Human Services to, “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.”
The new order requires that Treasury, Labor and HHS, require the disclosure of the actual prices of items and services, not estimates it requires regulatory action to ensure compliance of the disclosures and creates an enforcement mechanism for non-compliant hospitals and health plans. This will be a priceless tool in our continued efforts to control the unsustainable premium increases that we have sustained over the past 4 years.
Unfortunately, over the past four years some of the components were rolled back and there was no real enforcement of the parts that stayed in place, the most disturbing of which was the ability of estimates to be used instead of the real prices.
Our members owe a debt of gratitude to our friends at patientrightsadvocate.org, and specifically its founder, Cynthia Fisher who started this cause and advocates for our members tirelessly as well as President Trump for standing up to the powerful hospital lobby. We are also grateful for the support our national affiliate, NAPO has given to this cause, being the first national law enforcement organization to sign on in support of the federal legislation we testified on in the last session.
We now focus our efforts back to New Jersey where we are working with numerous public and private sector unions on the Coalition for Affordable Hospitals led by the 32BJ health fund. Our main focus is to codify Governor Murphy’s Office of Healthcare Affordability and Transparency which will compile data on hospital pricing, create a benchmark for prices and make hospitals accountable for out-of-control pricing. Bill number A5376, sponsored by Asws. Reynolds-Jackson, Carter and Murphy will make the bad actors accountable.
There will be tremendous opposition from the hospital association and the insurers as they want to protect the status quo, hopefully, we will have elected officials that will put patients over profits. We are asking for transparency, and as police officers we have been subject to scrutiny beyond any other profession. Asking hospitals, who are chartered for the public good, for the same, is both logical and just.