Dear Representative
On behalf of patients from all across America, Patients Rising Now asks for your support for the Lower Costs, More Transparency Act. There are too many barriers and entrenched interests working against meaningful change in how healthcare is reimbursed.
Patients are too often left with limited choices, coverage gaps, and excessive out-of-pocket costs on top of high-priced premiums. This is due – at least in part – to the perverse incentives and hidden deals that are covered up by an opaque curtain installed by special interests across all healthcare sectors. While transparency alone may not be a solution. We can only have reform, once we have transparency.
The Lower Cost, More Transparency Act is an important first step that can lead to the reforms patients need. Prices that have been purposely placed in the shadows will be put into the sunshine. Hospitals and other service providers will be required to publicly list prices charged to patients. Health insurers and their pharmacy benefit companies have put their formularies out to the highest bidder, and the patient receives no direct benefit. This bill will have health insurers and their middlemen disclose rebates and discounts. This means the American public will finally know what the real cost is of a prescription drug. With transparency and accurate reporting, lawmakers can better serve patients by ensuring that those rebates and discounts are shared with the patient at the point of sale, rather than pay out-of-pocket on an inflated list price as they do today.
This bill also brings important payment parity for medicines administered by a healthcare provider in hospitals and in outpatient settings for Medicare patients. The trend of health system consolidation has led to a lot of financial engineering. Hospitals are purchasing physicians’ practices and designating them as off-campus outpatient centers to charge Medicare higher rates.
The manipulation of our healthcare system needs to end and that can only start by seeing how it is directly working against patients. The Lower Cost, More Transparency Act is an important start to bringing more daylight to American healthcare. It is the start to re-center healthcare around the patient.
Patients Rising Now hopes we can count on your favorable vote for the Lower Cost, More Transparency Act.
Sincerely,
MacKay Jimeson
Executive Director
Patients Rising Now