President Donald Trump and HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have worked to combat inflation and high healthcare prices by enforcing healthcare price transparency.
“Republicans are finally doing what was politically unthinkable for either party and moving to scrutinize the role of greedy hospitals in raising healthcare costs for all Americans,” a senior Trump administration official told Breitbart News in a written statement.
In February 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that would empower patients with clear, accurate, and actionable healthcare pricing information. The executive order directs the Departments of Treasury, Labor, and Health and Human Services (HHS) to enforce healthcare price transparency regulations, which the Trump administration said was slow walked by the Biden administration.
The Departments will work to ensure that hospitals and insurers disclose actual prices, not estimates, and take action to make prices comparable across hospitals and insurers, including prescription drug costs.
The order ensures that a patient can easily shop for the best price per healthcare service.
The White House press release stated, “One patient in Wisconsin saved $1,095 by shopping for two tests between two hospitals located within 30 minutes of one another.”
Kennedy noted that, as of April 1, HHS will now require hospital executives to attest that the prices they have posted are accurate.
He wrote, “If hospitals mislead patients or fail to disclose actual prices, we will hold them accountable. Transparency drives competition — and competition lowers healthcare costs for every American.”
The order is particularly empowering as many hospitals have often failed to disclose prices so Americans can easily shop for the best price for their healthcare needs.
Former Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN), now-governor of Indiana, said in 2024 that Trump’s healthcare price transparency rule would be “bigger than Obamacare.”
Since the start of Trump’s second term in office, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) have issued 11 enforcement actions against hospitals that have not complied with the transparency orders.
The Paragon Health Institute, a think tank established by Trump first term health official Brian Blase, released a report that discussed how hospitals are driving up prices. It also detailed how current regulations often reward consolidation, opacity, and inefficiency rather than incentivizing competition, value, and accountability.
“This Administration is focused on fighting inflation, and no one has done more to raise costs than greedy hospitals. These hospitals are posing as charities and taking millions in nonprofit tax breaks. Meanwhile, they’re upcharging Americans while their CEOs take home tens of millions of dollars each year. It’s a total scam,” one former White House official said.
Conservative political activist and former collegiate swimmer Riley Gaines Baker shared her experiences with opaque pricing in hospital services:
Mark Perry, a former American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and economics professor, found that the prices of hospital services have risen by 281 percent since 2000, far outpacing the rate of inflation or even college tuition, which has risen by 196 percent in 26 years.
One report from Families USA found that high healthcare prices, including the prices of hospital services, cost an estimated $240 billion in wasteful spending each year, while the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) noted that hospital spending accounted for 40 percent of the growth of the national health spending between 2022 and 2024.
The Lown Instititue found that 80 percent of nonprofit hospitals give back less to their communities than they receive in estimated tax breaks.
The Patient Rights Advocate (PRA) in September 2025 noted that 12 percent of hospitals failed to post any actual prices in dollars and cents. PRA said that only 15.5 percent of hospitals were found to be sufficient in the disclosure of dollars-and-cents prices.
The House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday will host a hearing with health system executives, including:
- HCA Healthcare CEO Sam Hazen
- CommonSpirit Health President and CEO Wright Lassiter III
- New York-Presbyterian President and CEO Dr. Brian G. Donley
- ECU Health CEO Dr. Michael Waldrum
- Protect Our Care President Brad Woodhouse
Data has shown that hospital systems, many of which reportedly are nonprofits, charged high prices and have even been sued by the Trump administration for allegedly anticompetitive practices.
New York-Presbyterian reportedly had a $547 million profit in 2024. In 2024, Steven Corwin, the president, CEO, and trustee, of New York-Presbyterian, reportedly made over $24 million. New York-Presbyterian in February 2025 removed references to so-called “gender-affirming care.”
New York-Presbyterian’s COMPASS program provided services that included “puberty suppression and gender-affirming hormone treatment,” according to an archived version of the website. It also described COMPASS as a “safe space for youth navigating their gender experience.”
A spokesperson for the hospital said that the COMPASS program is still operating; however, it made changes to the website in response to President Donald Trump’s executive order that declared hospitals that provided care for “gender-affirming care” would be denied federal funds.
A RAND study from 2020-2022 found that ECU Health hospitals charge patients with private insurance 288 percent, or nearly three times more, than people with Medicare.
The Trump administration sued New York-Presbyterian, the largest hospital system in New York, for alleged anticompetitive practices that increase healthcare costs for New Yorkers.
“New York-Presbyterian has known for years that the American consumer wants budget-conscious health plans that reduce healthcare costs,” Acting Assistant General Omeed A. Assefi said in a written statement in March. “But rather than offer consumers choice, New York-Presbyterian uses its market power to protect its margins, impede competition from rival hospitals, and prevent employers and unions from creating these plans. The Antitrust Division will continue to hold hospitals violating the antitrust laws accountable. I am grateful for the dedicated work of our staff and the Southern District of New York in this matter.”
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.