The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee advanced the Patients Deserve Price Tags Act on July 22 in a 21-1 vote, sending healthcare price transparency legislation to the full Senate floor, The Center Square reported July 22.
Sens. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., and John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., sponsor the bill, which mirrors President Donald Trump’s executive actions on hospital and insurer price disclosure. Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., cast the lone opposing vote; Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, did not vote.
The legislation would require hospitals to publicly report negotiated rates, cash prices and costs for ambulatory services, imaging and clinical labs. ASCs with hospital ownership ties would be pulled into that mandate too: beginning July 1, 2027, hospital-affiliated ASCs would have to publish gross charges, cash prices, payer-specific negotiated rates and de-identified minimum and maximum rates, following the same disclosure model as hospitals, according to bill text on Congress.gov. The bill also directs the HHS secretary to collect monthly reports of each hospital’s standard charges and set a uniform format for disclosing them, and it guarantees group health plans access to claims data while barring third parties from restricting patients’ access to that data.
Dr. Marshall said the bill could cut healthcare costs for families by up to $1,000 a month.
“Once and for all, we’ll force transparency and competition into healthcare,” he said.
Mr. Hickenlooper estimated more than 180 million Americans are affected by the lack of price transparency, calling the industry an “aggregated monopoly.”
The Senate bill now moves to the full chamber, where it must pass both chambers of Congress by Jan. 3, 2027, to become law.
A day earlier, the House Energy and Commerce Committee advanced its own package, the Lower Costs, More Transparency Act, in a 45-0 vote on July 21. That bill would extend price transparency requirements to freestanding ASCs for the first time, along with independent clinical labs and imaging providers, effective in 2028 — a broader reach than the Senate bill’s hospital-tied ASC provision. The House bill would also write existing hospital shoppable-services and payer negotiated-rate disclosure rules into law starting in 2028, require hospitals to list a billing identifier for every unit that bills under their name and disclose owners holding a 5% stake or more, and require a facility CEO or CFO to attest that the data is accurate.
“In just the last seven months, we have held hearings with insurance CEOs, members of the drug supply chain, hospitals, and doctors,” Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., said in a news release. “We’ve conducted critical oversight of waste, fraud, and abuse in the health care system, and we’ve assessed opportunities to enhance transparency for consumers.”
The House bill still needs sign-off from the Ways and Means and Education and Workforce committees before it reaches the floor.
The American Hospital Association pushed back on both bills, warning in July 21 and July 22 statements that writing existing transparency requirements into law would limit CMS’s flexibility and add administrative burden. The association specifically opposed eliminating price estimator tools as a compliance option, expanding disclosure to all shoppable services, a new ownership-disclosure requirement it says duplicates data CMS already collects, and what it called an “overly broad” bar on collections actions in the Senate bill.
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