Watch: President Trump Signs an Executive Order on Improving Price and Quality Transparency in Healthcare

We should also require drug companies, insurance companies, and hospitals to disclose real prices to foster competition and bring costs down.

President Trump signed an executive order on healthcare pricing Monday afternoon.

Watch:

“President Donald J. Trump is delivering on his promise to bring more healthcare price and quality transparency for American patients,” the White House said in a statement.

The executive order accomplishes this by:

• Directing the Administration to take steps to improve price and quality transparency in healthcare.
• Requiring hospitals to publicly disclose amounts that reflect what people actually pay for services in an easy-to-read format.
• Directing HHS to begin the process of making information on out-of-pocket spending more readily available to patients before they receive care.
• Researchers, innovators, and providers will get more access to data that will help them develop tools to provide patients with more information about healthcare prices and quality.
• Improving quality measurements and making them public.
• Improve consumers’ incentives to shop for care by expanding the benefit of Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and other tax-preferred health accounts.

The president believes that powerful interests have kept patients in the dark about the true costs of healthcare.

“For too long, powerful interests have blocked patients from knowing the true price and quality of healthcare, denying them the information they need to make informed choices,” the White House said. “Lack of transparency contributes to soaring costs, suppressed competition, and lower quality.”

“When armed with accurate information, patients can often identify savings by shopping around for healthcare services,” the administration added.

This new order is the latest policy directive from Trump on healthcare costs. The president recently signed legislation to end “gag” clauses that prevented pharmacists from letting patients know about potentially lower prices for drugs, took action to require drug manufacturers to publicly disclose drug prices in their television ads, empowered consumers and expanded affordable options like Health Reimbursement Arrangements, short-term plans, and Association Health Plans.

Last year, the president launched a blueprint on ways to drive down drug prices and find savings for American patients. Shortly after the launch, more than a dozen drug companies froze or lowered prices causing prescription drug prices to drop for the first time in nearly 50 years.

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