For decades, the political and media class has told Americans that the only way to fix health care is with more government—more mandates, more regulations, and more spending.
What has that approach delivered? Skyrocketing costs and unaccountable bureaucracy. Inflation-adjusted national health care spending has more than doubled since 2000. As a result, over 100 million Americans have medical debt, and many avoid care altogether for fear of financial ruin.
It’s time we tried something different. If we want to reduce costs and create a pro-consumer system, then we must restore the free market, which works in every other sector of the economy.
That starts with one basic principle: Americans deserve to know the price before they buy. That’s the simple, powerful idea behind the Patients Deserve Price Tags Act, a bipartisan bill I recently introduced with Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo.
Our bill finally requires actual, upfront prices across the health care system, including discounted cash and negotiated insurance rates (not unaccountable estimates). It requires that health plans offer an Advanced Explanation of Benefits, so patients know their out-of-pocket responsibility before care.
This real price information protects patients from overcharges, empowers employer health plans to choose quality, less expensive care, and unleashes real market competition to drive down costs.
The legislation ends the opaque status quo where giant hospital systems, health insurers, and middlemen overcharge without consequence. Nearly every American has a billing horror story: $2,400 for basic lab tests, $8,400 for a biopsy, or $660 for a five-minute telehealth visit. Our bill gives Americans the prices they need to choose affordable alternatives.
Most Americans get coverage through their employer. But those health plans have been stuck with rising costs that eat into worker wages and take-home pay. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, the average employer-sponsored health plan now costs $24,000 a year—a 50% increase over the past decade. And a JAMA study shows premiums as a share of total compensation have more than doubled since 1988.
Our bill gives employers the tools to reverse this trend. It gives them access to the claims data their third-party administrators often withhold. That means they can finally audit their plans for spread pricing and overbilling. It also exposes the vertically integrated relationships of health insurers, third-party administrators, and Pharmacy Benefit Managers, allowing employers to stop kickback schemes that inflate costs behind the scenes. Ensuing savings can be shared with workers through lower premiums and higher wages.
The impact of systemwide price transparency would be enormous. Economists project it could save the U.S. up to $1 trillion a year, redirecting unproductive health care spending to the productive private economy, including business earnings and workers’ wages.
The Patients Deserve Price Tags Act is a pro-worker, pro-consumer, pro-market reform. It opens the door for tech companies and AI to aggregate price data into simple shopping tools, bringing health care into the 21st century like every other part of the economy.
It’s no surprise that price transparency enjoys overwhelming bipartisan support. A recent Marist poll found that 94% of Americans want to see actual prices before receiving care.
This legislation will bring transparency, accountability, and trust back to health care, values long missing from a system distorted by government overreach, corporatism, and cronyism. When prices are known and competition is unleashed, costs come down, quality goes up, and a functional, pro-consumer marketplace emerges.
Let’s pass this legislation and finally give the free market a chance to work in health care.
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