S 2355: Patients Deserve Price Tags Act

S 2355 in plain English: This bill would strengthen requirements for hospitals, insurers, and other healthcare entities to publicly disclose prices for their services. It establishes or increases civil monetary penalties for noncompliance, with penalty amounts scaled by hospital size and type of violator.

Stated purpose

The bill aims to require hospitals and insurers to publicly disclose their prices for medical items and services, so patients can see and compare costs before receiving care.

Key points

• Penalizes noncompliant hospitals up to $300–$35 per bed per day depending on size, with higher rates after one year of noncompliance
• Caps maximum hospital penalties at $500,000–$10,000,000 depending on number of beds
• Penalizes insurers or plan administrators up to $300 per member per day, not to exceed $10,000,000
• Penalizes pharmacy benefit managers or other service providers up to $10,000 per day for violations
• Penalizes certain providers $100,000 per day for each violation of applicable price transparency requirements

Arguments supporters make

• Patients currently have no way to compare hospital prices before getting care, and this bill gives them real price information so they can make informed choices and potentially save money.
• Publishing negotiated rates between hospitals and insurers creates competitive pressure that could lower prices over time, benefiting both patients and employers who pay for coverage.
• Existing price transparency rules have had weak enforcement and limited scope; this bill strengthens and expands those requirements so the information is actually useful and complete.

Arguments opponents make

• Requiring hospitals to publish every negotiated rate with every insurer could make those rates a ceiling rather than a floor, reducing insurers' ability to bargain prices down and potentially raising costs.
• Compliance with detailed monthly reporting across hundreds of services and payer contracts imposes significant administrative costs on hospitals, which may be passed on to patients.
• Price transparency alone may not help patients who have little real choice in emergencies or in areas with only one hospital, meaning the burden falls on providers without delivering meaningful consumer benefit.

Tradeoffs

Making prices fully public gives consumers more information and may encourage competition, but it also forces hospitals and insurers to reveal confidential contract terms, which could change how negotiations work and affect the final prices patients pay. The requirement covers all providers uniformly, so smaller or rural hospitals face the same disclosure burden as large systems, regardless of their administrative capacity.

Current status in Congress: In committee.

NewsClear — neutral news & congressional tracking · Bill of the Week