WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Maggie Hassan (D-NH) and Roger Marshall (R-KS) introduced bipartisan legislation to increase hospital billing transparency for patients as part of Senator Hassan’s efforts to combat unfair hospital facility fees. Under current law, hospital systems often bill hospital facility fees to patients who get care at doctor’s offices or community clinics miles away from a hospital.
The Fair Billing Act would require hospitals to use unique billing identification numbers at each of their off-campus locations, ensuring that patients receive bills that accurately reflect where they received care, which will also help patients identify when they get charged unfair facility fees. This legislation builds on Senator Hassan’s ongoing bipartisan efforts, which are widely supported by patient advocacy organizations, to address unfair hospital facility fees. The proposal was originally introduced as part of the SITE Act in the previous Congress.
“Families across New Hampshire experience sticker shock when their regular doctor’s office or clinic suddenly starts sending higher bills after being purchased by a hospital,” said Senator Hassan. “This bipartisan bill will help increase transparency by requiring hospitals to use unique provider numbers for each hospital-owned clinic or doctor’s office when billing patients as part of our efforts to combat unfair facility fees.”
“This legislation is another step towards long-overdue price transparency for patients and a key pillar of Making America Healthy Again,” said Senator Marshall. “By identifying the specific site of care, patients and payers will better understand the cost of services based on where it is provided. I am proud to join Senator Hassan in introducing this important legislation.”
“BPC Action applauds Sens. Maggie Hassan (D-NH) and Roger Marshall (R-KS) for this bipartisan effort to improve payment transparency. Ensuring that off-campus hospital outpatient departments bill using a unique provider identifier and submit provider-based attestations is a meaningful step toward more comprehensive site-neutral payment reform, which should advance alongside reinvestments in the nation's rural and safety-net hospitals,” says Michele Stockwell, president of Bipartisan Policy Center Action (BPC Action).
“Too many Americans struggle to afford health care and forgo the care they need due to the unnecessarily high prices large, consolidated hospitals charge. We applaud Sens. Hassan and Marshall on the introduction of this bipartisan legislation to address the opaque billing practices that hospitals use to obscure where care is being delivered and charge patients more for routine care their doctor provides. This is an important step toward a more transparent, affordable health care system. The Fair Billing Act will help lower costs for patients and businesses, save taxpayers billions, and assure patients have access to quality care.” – Mark E. Miller, executive vice president of health care at Arnold Ventures.
"This bill is an important step toward fair and transparent hospital billing. A root cause of the health care affordability crisis is corporate hospital systems buying up smaller physician practices and reclassifying them as hospital outpatient departments. Patients receive the same care in the same building from the same doctor but now with staggering price mark ups. We are committed to advancing real solutions to increase transparency, improve care and lower costs for all Americans. We look forward to working with Congress to pass this legislation." – David Merritt, BCBSA senior vice president, External Affairs
"The prices Americans pay for health care is too high, especially for hospital care” said Darbin Wofford, Deputy Director of Health Care at Third Way. “We proudly support the bipartisan work of Senators Hassan and Marshall to bring transparency to hospital billing. Big hospital chains are often padding medical bills with junk ‘facility fees,’ pushing family-owned physician offices to end their private practice, and increasing costs for workers and small businesses. The Fair Billing Act takes on facility fees by requiring hospitals to bill accurately for the services they deliver. Congress came close to passing parts of this bill last December, which is why lawmakers should seize this opportunity and pass the Fair Billing Act into law now.”
“This bill is an important step towards increasing transparency in our health care system, which in turn helps lower costs for cancer patients and others struggling with the exorbitant cost of healthcare. Requiring off-campus outpatient departments to bill using a unique provider identifier reduces the incentive for hospitals to buy up physicians’ offices just so that they can charge more for the same services.” – Brian Connell, Vice President, Federal Affairs, at The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.
“The American Benefits Council applauds Senators Maggie Hassan (D-NH) and Roger Marshall (R-KS) for introducing the Fair Billing Act. This bipartisan legislation represents a positive and important step toward lowering health care costs for working families by restricting hospital billing practices that fuel consolidation and mask what should be the appropriate payment amounts for care delivered in lower-cost settings.” – American Benefits Council
“As physicians and health care providers, our members regularly see how out of control costs prevent their patients from getting the care that they need. When people aren't able to afford necessary health care, they develop worse health outcomes and suffer needlessly. By ensuring each off-campus, outpatient department bills with a unique provider identifier, the Fair Billing Act will improve care delivery, lower costs, and provide much-needed clarity for patients and providers alike.” – Rob Davidson, MD MPH, Executive Director, Committee to Protect Health Care
“The Alliance to Fight for Health Care applauds Sens. Hassan (D-NH) and Marshall (R-KS) for introducing the bipartisan Fair Billing Act, which will increase transparency in hospital billing to ensure patients and payers know the exact location where care was provided, not just who provided the care. This transparency will empower patients to dispute erroneous fees, unfair add-on costs, hospital upcharges and other junk fees. Honest billing also will lower patients’ out-of-pocket expenses for medical services they receive by allowing Medicare and private payers to reimburse providers accurately.” – Alliance to Fight for Health Care
“Employers and patients should have full transparency into the health care services they are paying for at the specific place for which they are receiving these services,” said the ERISA Industry Committee (ERIC) President and CEO James Gelfand. “Without this full line of sight, there is no accountability to hospitals, and they will continue to bill patients the same amount for services performed outside of the four walls of the hospital – but at the higher amount demanded by the parent hospital. And then they add on facility fees, again as if your services were performed in a hospital facility to support that parent hospital – a double whammy for patients. The hospital gets paid, and patients are left footing an even bigger bill. ERIC applauds Senators Hassan and Marshall for their legislation that would bring much needed transparency and accountability to the shell games hospitals are playing,” Gelfand added.
“Better Solutions for Healthcare, an employer-based coalition, applauds Senators Hassan and Marshall as they continue to support policies that bring more transparency to our health care costs. Care should cost the same no matter where it occurs—whether it’s at a hospital or outpatient facility should make no difference. More transparency in hospital billing is an important first step to reducing high healthcare costs and preventing hospitals from exploiting the current system that encourages further hospital consolidation. We appreciate the Senators’ leadership to push for policies that lower healthcare costs for employers and consumers,” said Connie Partoyan, Executive Director of Better Solutions for Healthcare
“Every patient and family has a right to know what a health care procedure will cost them before they get the bill, but American health care doesn't work like that. For far too long, big health care corporations have been gaming the system and hiding the real cost of medical procedures behind unfair fees and other abusive price gouging tactics,” said Sophia Tripoli, senior director of health policy at Families USA. “Amidst our nation’s health care affordability crisis, we applaud Senators Hassan and Marshall for working across the aisle to fight for patients and protect families across America from getting slapped with huge, unexpected health care bills. We must keep working to bring greater transparency to health care pricing that will help lower health care costs once and for all.”
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