/>iOn February 25, 2025, President Donald Trump issued an Executive Order titled “Making America Healthy Again by Empowering Patients with Clear, Accurate, and Actionable Healthcare Pricing Information” (the 2025 Order). The 2025 Order directs federal agencies to take various actions to prioritize enforcement of healthcare price transparency requirements for hospitals and health plans “to support a more competitive, innovative, affordable, and higher quality healthcare system.”
Price Transparency Rules Background
The 2025 Order follows a 2019 Executive Order issued by then-President Trump titled “Executive Order on Improving Price and Quality Transparency in American Healthcare to Put Patients First” (the Price Transparency Order). That 2019 Price Transparency Order resulted in the adoption of regulations commonly called the Hospital Price Transparency Rules. Those Rules, in pertinent part, 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. Read our previous analysis of the 2019 Price Transparency Order here, and our analysis of a 2024 OIG audit of hospital compliance with the Price Transparency Rules here.
2025 Price Transparency Executive Order Requirements
The 2025 Order now tasks the Departments of Treasury, Labor, and Health and Human Services with taking “all necessary and appropriate action” to implement and enforce the Hospital Price Transparency Rules because “hospitals and health plans were not adequately held to account when their price transparency data was incomplete or not even posted at all.”
Specifically, within 90 days of the 2025 Order, the federal agencies must:
(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.
Notably, the phrase “actual prices of items and services” is not defined in the Order, and the express rebuke of pricing “estimates” appears to run counter to the approach taken under the No Surprises Act regulations (requiring the provision of good faith estimates) and certain state laws that require health care providers to furnish estimates to patients upon request. Whether and to what extent the agencies define these terms in subsequent guidance and/or rulemaking will be essential for health care organizations to monitor.
Takeaways for Health Care Organizations
Prior to the 2025 Order, the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) had already issued civil monetary penalties for non-compliance with the Hospital Price Transparency Rules, and the 2025 Order appears intended to ramp up that type of enforcement action.
Hospitals, health plans, and providers should expect further guidance and enforcement information from these federal agencies during the 90-day period, which ends May 26, 2025. Regardless, health care organizations would be well-advised to review their price transparency processes and information available for consumers, as well as their policies to prepare for closer scrutiny of pricing disclosure practices. Additional information about the current Hospital Price Transparency Rules is available from CMS here.
