Sponsor
Mariannette Miller-Meeks
Representative · R-IA
Representative · R-IA
The bill increases visible facility-level price transparency for out-of-pocket patients, helping with upfront cost comparison and potentially reducing surprise bills, but it also creates compliance costs and risks confusing or misleading posted prices that may not reflect actual insured or out-of-pocket costs.
Uninsured and self-pay patients (including people with chronic conditions) will see dollar prices for common shoppable services posted on facility walls, letting them compare upfront costs before scheduling care.
People paying out-of-pocket (including the uninsured and some underinsured patients) may face fewer surprise or unexpected bills because hospitals, ASCs, labs, and imaging providers must post cash prices.
Patients (including Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries and people with chronic conditions) may be confused because posted cash or gross charges often do not reflect insurer-negotiated rates, true out-of-pocket estimates, or bundled ancillary fees.
Hospitals, ASCs, labs, and imaging providers will incur compliance costs to calculate, update, and display the required prices starting Jan 1, 2028, costs that could be passed on to patients.
Patients (especially uninsured and chronically ill individuals) may be misled if posted prices use median cash prices from the prior 3 years or gross charges that do not reflect current typical costs, producing inaccurate comparisons.
Based on analysis of 2 sections of legislative text.
Requires hospitals, ASCs, labs, and imaging providers to post specified shoppable services’ discounted cash prices (or median/gross prices if unavailable) on facility walls beginning Jan 1, 2028.
Official title: To amend title XXVII of the Public Health Service Act to require certain facilities to post prices on the walls.
Introduced June 23, 2026 by Mariannette Miller-Meeks · Last progress June 23, 2026
Requires hospitals, ambulatory surgical centers, clinical laboratories, and imaging providers in the U.S. to post certain cash prices for CMS-specified “shoppable services” on facility walls beginning January 1, 2028. If a discounted cash price exists, that dollar amount must be posted; if not, hospitals and ASCs post the median cash price charged to self-pay patients over the prior three years (hospitals: inpatient and outpatient settings), and labs and imaging providers post the gross charge.