The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), through the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), today announced that Americans will have access to more reliable, accessible, and actionable information about what their health coverage includes and what they are likely to pay before receiving care under new regulations that strengthen federal healthcare price transparency requirements. The actions taken today to create a more transparent healthcare marketplace also ensure employers can make more informed decisions; researchers can better understand healthcare markets; and innovators can build better tools.
“Americans should know what their healthcare will cost before they receive it,” said HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “President Trump directed us to bring real price transparency to healthcare, and HHS is delivering. These rules give patients clearer, more reliable information to compare costs, understand their coverage, and make informed decisions before they receive care.”
“Greater transparency drives competition, reduces price disparities, and helps lower healthcare costs, a key priority for the Trump Administration,” said CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz. “At the heart of this rule is a simple idea: People should know what their health insurance will cover and what they will need to pay before receiving medical care, not after the bill arrives.”
Updates to the Transparency in Coverage (TiC) rules, finalized today by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), in partnership with the Departments of Labor and the Treasury (the Departments), build on the historic health care price transparency rules established during President Trump’s first term.
The final rules improve the underlying healthcare pricing data by reducing duplicative and unnecessary information, providing more context about in-network prices, increasing available out-of-network pricing information, and strengthening accountability for the completeness and accuracy of published data. Reporting frequency for pricing information will change from monthly to quarterly, maintaining meaningful transparency while lowering administrative burden.
The rules also require group health plans and health insurance issuers to provide consumers with personalized cost-sharing information by phone, in addition to existing online tools.
These improvements will help technology developers build better consumer tools, give consumers more reliable information when comparing costs before receiving care, and enable employers and researchers to better analyze healthcare markets, all of which will help drive competition across the healthcare industry.
“Transparency is a pillar of the Trump Administration’s efforts to drive better value in healthcare,” said Secretary of Labor Keith Sonderling, “Today’s final rules will enhance the Transparency in Coverage (TiC) files already in existence, giving workers and employers alike a clearer view of their true healthcare costs.”
Excerpt from the official page. The original is authoritative. Continue reading at US CMS Newsroom ↗