WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has warned more than 500 hospitals that they are failing to provide the public with basic pricing information — arguing that the lack of disclosure is keeping healthcare costs higher than they should be.
The Associated Press obtained exclusively the list of hospitals that since April have either received letters of warning or, in more severe cases, requests to submit plans to provide transparent pricing. Failing to comply with the warnings comes with penalties as high as $2 million annually for each recipient that doesn’t create a plan to post clear pricing data.
The letters are meant to fix a fundamental problem that patients, employers and insurers might not know ahead of time the cost of blood work, an imaging test or another form of treatment, and as a result pay more than they should have. The AP has posted the list of hospitals that have received letters.
A senior administration official who requested anonymity to provide the list said President Donald Trump plans to tighten enforcement of price transparency standards made possible by a 2019 executive order signed by Trump . More hospitals are likely to receive letters regarding the absence of pricing data, the official said.
The warnings are the latest example of Trump leaning into the message that his administration is fixing the problem of healthcare expenses that can drain a family budget . It’s a calculated pitch ahead of the November midterms at a time when affordability is a top concern for voters. But Trump is also vulnerable on this particular issue, as his administration allowed subsidies to lapse for people buying insurance through the 2010 Affordable Care Act , widely known as Obamacare.
Just 29% of U.S. adults approved of Trump’s healthcare policies according to the most recent survey on the issue by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research . The president fared slightly worse on that issue in the December survey than on the economy, immigration or his management of the federal government.
Data on healthcare prices can be confusing
Gary Claxton, senior vice president and the director of the program on the healthcare marketplace at KFF, said the pricing data is more useful for benefit consultants and others in the sector with access to additional information than it would be for consumers. But he said the standards in reporting pricing data can still create difficulty in making accurate comparisons about the costs and quality of the services being provided.
“There’s a pretty widespread belief that prices are more divergent than they should be in a competitive market — and this is one way of trying to understand that more,” Claxton said. “It’s moving in the right direction, but that doesn’t mean it has gotten to where it needs to be.”
The American Hospital Association said in a statement that its members have long supported price transparency and the majority of hospitals are complying with the federal requirements that went into effect this year.
Still, Ashley Thompson, senior vice president for policy at the association, noted in the statement that “the current system is not working as well as it could for patients” and that hospitals would continue working with the administration to improve pricing information and transparency.
The push for price transparency could have a particular impact on Republican strongholds like Texas, Florida, Indiana, Alabama and Louisiana, which are among the states with the highest count of hospitals that have not provided adequate information on the costs of medical services.
Texas had 42 hospitals that received warnings, more than any other state. Baptist Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, among the state’s largest hospitals with 1,585 beds, received a letter, as did the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.
The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center said that after it received notice from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, it found “a minor formatting issue involving a date field” that was “quickly corrected.” The center said the government accepted the updated documentation and there “were no concerns regarding the integrity or completeness of the data.”
Missouri-based Ascension, one of the country’s largest hospital systems, had 13 hospitals in multiple states that received letters. Ascension said the warning letters identified a “minor technical error” and it’s committed to giving patients “the information they need to make informed decisions.”
The Republican state of Indiana had 34 hospitals that received letters, nearly as many as the 38 in Democratic-led California, even though California has five times more people than Indiana.
Administration officials interviewed for this article noted that Christiana Hospital in former President Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware also received a warning letter.
Different approaches to tackling high costs
The letters reflect two com…
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