OPINION:
There are moments in public policy when someone finally says aloud what millions of Americans have long felt but couldn’t quite articulate. Last month, we saw one of those moments at the Conservative Political Action Conference.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has taken a decisive and overdue step in confronting one of the most dysfunctional and opaque elements of our health care system: hospital pricing.
The stronger price transparency regulations he announced will serve as a technical fix for an issue that has created pain for decades.
As Mr. Kennedy put it: “This week we passed new regulations that require hospitals to post their prices … so we’re going to have price transparency. If you go to a restaurant, you can see what the prices are before you order a meal. If you go to a car dealer and he says you can buy this car, but I’m not going to tell you what the price is until after you’ve bought it, you would not buy that car. That’s how every hospital in this country works.”
That comparison lands because it is so obviously true. Nowhere else in the American economy are consumers expected to make life-altering financial decisions without knowing the price up front. In health care, however, this has been normalized.
For years, patients have walked into hospitals blind, unable to compare costs, anticipate bills or challenge charges that vary wildly for the same service. Even after federal transparency rules took effect in 2021, more than 75% of hospitals still fail to comply fully.
That is not a minor oversight; it is a systemic failure.
Mr. Kennedy’s renewed push signals enforcement with teeth. It is not enough for hospitals to gesture toward transparency with vague estimates or incomplete disclosures. Patients need real, usable, comparable prices. They need clarity beforehand, not confusion after the fact.
Transparency introduces competition into a market that has long operated without it. When patients can compare prices, providers must compete on reputation and, more important, on value. That pressure can drive down costs over time. It can also protect families from one of the most financially devastating experiences in modern health care: the surprise bill. Ultimately, transparency restores accountability.
Health care accounts for a massive share of the U.S. economy, yet its pricing structures have remained largely shielded from scrutiny. When hospitals are required to publish real prices, they must begin to justify them, align costs with value and answer to the people they serve.
Congress has been discussing health care costs for quite some time, but extortionate hospital pricing has largely escaped scrutiny until recently, when the House Energy and Commerce Committee brought in representatives of hospital associations to testify.
Yet Congress must go further than inviting trained lobbyists to blame every other actor in the health care space for elevating costs.
If transparency is to mean anything, then it must be backed by oversight. Lawmakers should call hospital CEOs before congressional committees and demand answers about waste, fraud and abuse within the system. Why has compliance been so low? Why do prices vary so dramatically? What justifies the lack of clarity that patients have endured for so long?
The American people deserve answers to those questions facilitated by their representatives in Congress. After all, they are the ones navigating a system that too often feels designed to obscure rather than inform.
Mr. Kennedy has taken an important first step, but lasting change will require sustained pressure, rigorous enforcement and a willingness from Congress to act.
Price transparency is not a partisan issue. It is a basic standard of fairness.
Thank you, Mr. Kennedy, for going on the offensive. Now Congress must do the same.
• Matthew Kandrach is president of Consumer Action for a Strong Economy, a free-market-oriented consumer advocacy group.
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