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On February 25, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order titled “Making America Healthy Again by Empowering Patients with Clear, Accurate, and Actionable Healthcare Pricing Information.” This order aims to increase transparency in healthcare costs, helping patients, employers, and taxpayers better understand what they’re paying for medical services before they receive care.
For years, healthcare prices have been hidden from consumers, making it difficult to compare costs and shop for affordable care. Hospitals and insurance companies have often operated without clear accountability in their pricing practices, leading to inflated medical expenses. This executive order seeks to change that by enforcing and expanding existing price transparency regulations.
A Look Back: The 2019 Executive Order on Price Transparency
This is not the first time healthcare price transparency has been a focus. Back in 2019, President Trump signed Executive Order 13877, which introduced key regulations, including:
- Hospitals must display pricing for up to 300 common medical services in a user-friendly format.
- Health plans must publish their negotiated rates with healthcare providers.
- Insurance companies must disclose the actual amounts they pay for prescription drugs.
Studies suggested that if fully implemented, these measures could lead to $80 billion in healthcare savings by 2025. Employers, in particular, stood to benefit, with estimates showing they could reduce healthcare costs by 27% across 500 common medical services.
However, enforcement stalled after Trump’s first term, and many hospitals and insurers failed to comply. The new executive order aims to strengthen enforcement and further expand transparency requirements.
What’s in the New Executive Order?
The latest executive order is designed to reinforce and expand previous regulations. Here’s what it will do:
- Require hospitals and insurers to disclose the actual prices of medical services, not just estimates.
- Standardize pricing information to make it easier for consumers to compare costs across different hospitals and health plans.
- Increase enforcement of price transparency rules, ensuring hospitals and insurers comply with reporting requirements. The Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Labor, and the Treasury have been instructed to take action within 90 days.
How This Could Affect You
If fully enforced, this executive order could benefit consumers in several ways:
- Patients will have access to upfront pricing, allowing them to make informed decisions and avoid unexpected medical bills.
- Employers may see reduced healthcare costs, potentially leading to lower insurance premiums for employees.
- Increased competition among healthcare providers could help drive prices down over time.
However, some challenges remain. Certain hospitals and insurance companies have pushed back on transparency rules, arguing that revealing pricing data could lead to unintended consequences, such as higher prices in some cases. Whether this order successfully lowers healthcare costs will depend on how well it is enforced.
Impact on Health Share Members and Organizations
For those who participate in health share programs, this executive order might have indirect but meaningful effects. Since health shares are not insurance companies, they are not directly subject to these regulations. However, here’s how members could benefit:
- Easier price comparisons – With hospitals required to disclose pricing, health share members will have more transparent information when selecting providers and submitting expenses for sharing.
- Better negotiating power – Transparent pricing could help health share members negotiate better cash-pay rates.
- Possible cost reductions – If price transparency leads to lower overall medical costs, it could reduce the amounts health share organizations facilitate for sharing among members.
- No direct impact on health share rules – This executive order does not change how health share programs operate or impose new requirements on them. Members will still follow their health share’s guidelines when submitting expenses.
Final Thoughts
President Trump’s latest executive order aims to make healthcare pricing more transparent, improve enforcement of existing regulations, and help consumers make informed choices about their medical expenses. Whether or not it significantly lowers costs will depend on how well it is implemented and enforced.
If you’re looking for an alternative to traditional health insurance, health share programs may be worth considering. They offer a community-based approach to healthcare costs and can often be a more affordable option.
Want to learn more? Download my FREE Health Share Guide to see if a health share membership could be right for you! https://healthshare101.com/freeguide
What do you think about this executive order? Will price transparency improve the healthcare system? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!
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