President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Sept. 24 aimed at ensuring access to health insurance coverage for consumers with preexisting conditions, expanding hospital price transparency, and limiting surprise billing.
The order, “An America-First Healthcare Plan,” includes the following provisions:
- Preexisting conditions. This seeks to ensure consumers with preexisting conditions can obtain affordable insurance coverage. The order does not specify how this goal will be achieved nor does the order directly call upon government agencies to enact regulations or Congress to pass legislation.
- Price transparency. This requires the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), within 180 days, to update the Medicare.gov Hospital Compare website to inform beneficiaries of hospital billing quality, including whether the hospital is in compliance with the Hospital Price Transparency Final Rule. In addition, Hospital Compare would include whether the hospital provides patients with an itemized receipt of hospital services upon discharge and how often the hospital pursues legal action against patients for outstanding bills.
- Surprise billing. This requires the HHS to take administrative action to prevent a patient from receiving a bill for out-of-pocket expenses that the patient could not have reasonably foreseen.