Leading Coalitions Urge the Senate to Act on Health Care Affordability

The Consumers for Fair Hospital Pricing coalition and the Consumers First alliance, two coalitions made up of leading organizations representing families, workers, primary care clinicians, employers, and health care consumers across the United States, sent this letter calling on Senate leadership to act without delay to remedy some of the most obvious health system failings by improving price transparency, increasing healthy competition, and ensuring that patients pay the same price for the same health care service.

Specifically, the groups call on the Senate to advance policies that:

• Achieve meaningful price transparency by requiring all hospitals and health plans to disclose negotiated rates, in dollars and cents.
• Enact site neutral payments for drug administration services to help ensure consumers pay the same price for the same service regardless of where the service is performed.
• Advance billing transparency reforms so off-campus hospital outpatient departments are required to use a separate identifier when billing to Medicare or commercial insurers to ensure large hospital systems do not overcharge for the care they deliver in outpatient settings.

The letter is signed by Families USA and the steering committees of Consumers First (American Academy of Family Physicians; American Benefits Council; American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees; and Purchaser Business Group on Health) and Consumers for Fair Hospital Pricing (Colorado Consumer Health Initiative; Consumers for Quality Care; Health Access California; Pennsylvania Health Action Network; Public Citizen; and U.S. PIRG).