The leader of a Catholic health-sharing ministry is praising President Donald Trump’s executive order on price transparency for healthcare services, predicting that it will help efforts to ensure Americans have access to more affordable healthcare.
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order titled “Making America Healthy Again by Empowering Patients With Clear, Accurate, and Actionable Healthcare Pricing Information.”
The executive order directs the secretary of the treasury, the secretary of labor and the secretary of health and human services to “take all necessary and appropriate action” to quickly enforce healthcare price transparency regulations issued in response to an executive order he issued in his first term.
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The regulations stemming from the 2019 executive order required hospitals to “maintain a consumer-friendly display of pricing information for up to 300 shoppable services and a machine-readable file with negotiated rates for every single service the hospital provides.”
Additionally, the regulations force health plans to “post their negotiated rates with providers as well as their out-of-network payments to providers and the actual prices they or their pharmacy benefit manager pay for prescription drugs.” Health plans must also maintain “a consumer-facing internet tool through which individuals can access price information.”
Trump gave the heads of the relevant departments in his administration 90 days to “require the disclosure of the actual prices of items and services, not estimates,” issue “updated guidance or proposed regulatory action ensuring pricing information is standardized and easily comparable across hospitals and health plans” and “issue guidance or proposed regulatory action updating enforcement policies designed to ensure compliance with the transparent reporting of complete, accurate, and meaningful data.”
A report from PatientRightsAdvocate.org states that about 21.1% of 2,000 hospitals reviewed in November 2024 were in full compliance of Trump’s regulations, which went into effect in 2021. As many as 36% of 2,000 hospitals were in compliance in July 2023.
A new rule implemented in July 2024 permitted hospitals to post estimates and averages rather than actual prices starting in January 2025, the organization reported.
Trump’s new order vowed that the federal government will “take all necessary steps to improve existing price transparency requirements” and “identify opportunities to further empower patients with meaningful price information.”
Chris Faddis of the Catholic healthcare sharing ministry Solidarity HealthShare declared that transparency in the healthcare industry is “long overdue.”
In a statement shared with The Christian Post, he predicted the order “will bolster efforts already underway by Solidarity HealthShare to make transparent price information available to patients and to support an affordable and higher quality healthcare system.”
The executive order cited an “economic analysis from 2023” that “estimated the impact of these regulations, if fully implemented, could result in as much as $80 billion in healthcare savings for consumers, employers, and insurers by 2025.”
“Another report from 2024 suggested healthcare price transparency could help employers reduce healthcare costs by 27 percent across 500 common healthcare services,” the order stated.
In a statement announcing the order, the White House claimed since prices vary widely “from hospital to hospital,” one patient in Wisconsin “saved $1,095 by shopping for two tests between two hospitals located within 30 minutes of one another.”
“Hiding or inflating healthcare prices allows hospitals, insurers, and other companies to charge whatever they want — at the expense of lower income and elderly patients who need accountability and transparency from their healthcare providers,” Faddis added. “Americans deserve complete information in order to make the best decision for their life and healthcare.”
Officials at Solidarity HealthShare wrote a letter to the Department of Government Efficiency and HHS asking the administration “to enforce the Hospital Price Transparency Rule, eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse in the marketplace, and protect patients and unethical practices in the medical industry.”
“Solidarity is committed to price transparency and repricing for its patients and stands as a resource for the administration, bringing almost a decade of experience serving over 46,000 members,” he vowed.
“We look forward to working with President Trump, DOGE, and HHS to address the broken health care system and ensure price transparency for all Americans.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: ryan.foley@christianpost.com
