On 6/24/19, President Trump signed an executive order directing the of Departments of Labor (DOL), Treasury and Health and Human Services (HHS) to increase healthcare price and quality transparency by issuing guidance that would:
- require hospitals to disclose information about their negotiated rates in a format that’s understandable and usable by patients
- require insurance companies to provide patients with information about cost of care, including out-of-pocket costs, before they receive services
- develop a comprehensive roadmap for consistent, limited, consumer-centric quality metrics
- disclose de-identified federal healthcare data that protects patient and consumer privacy, enables transformation of the healthcare marketplace, and allows researchers to develop tools and analytics to allow patients to be at the center of their healthcare
- expand the availability of HSAs to cover direct primary care arrangements and healthcare sharing ministries, include more preventive services and products that can be covered in the deductible period, and issue guidance on the amount of funds that can be carried over at the remainder of the year for FSAs
The executive order is the president’s third major executive action on healthcare since taking office, followig the order issued on his first day in office directing agencies to ease the regulatory burden of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and the order issued in October 2017 that led to the development of the rules on Association Health Plans, short-term plans and HRAs.
As with previous orders issued, this does not immediately trigger any executive action apart from the instructions issued to the agencies to develop regulatory actions. These will need to go through the traditional rulemaking procedures of providing a proposed rule for public comment before being able to enact any final rules.
We will provide more information in the weeks to come.