Exclusive — ‘Bigger than Obamacare’: Sen. Mike Braun Calls to Codify Trump Healthcare Transparency Rule — with Bernie Sanders

Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN) told Breitbart News in an interview that codifying former President Donald Trump’s healthcare rule into law — with a bill he and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) sponsored — would be “bigger than Obamacare.”

In 2019, Trump first announced his “revolutionary” proposal to require hospitals to publish their prices for services publicly, allowing Americans to truly know what they would have to pay for healthcare services with their health insurance plan.

“For decades, hospitals, insurance companies, lobbyists, and special interests have hidden prices from consumers so they could drive up costs for you,” Trump said. “And you had no idea what was happening. You’d get bills that were unbelievable and you have no idea why.”

The Trump administration was able to enact the rule even though he faced significant opposition from the healthcare industry.

The American Hospital Association sued the Trump administration to require healthcare providers to publish the cost of negotiated prices between health insurers and healthcare providers.

Judge Nichols ruled in 2020 in favor of the Trump administration, and he found that hospitals were “attacking transparency measures generally” to limit American consumers’ insight into medical prices.

The Hoosier senator told Breitbart News that, despite the Trump victory in court, the healthcare providers still make it nearly impossible for consumers to figure out what they may have to pay for healthcare services with their insurance plan.

“It’s kind of the same old thing. Nothing’s really changed,” he remarked.

Indeed, a February 2024 report from the Patient Rights Advocate found that only 34.5 percent of hospitals reviewed by the organization fully comply with the federal Price Transparency Rule. The Patient Rights Advocate called on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to ramp up enforcement to ensure that hospitals comply with the Trump rule.

Now, to codify the Trump-era rule, Braun, who described himself as one of the most “free market” senators, and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), an advocate of the single-payer “Medicare for All” plan and chairman of the Senate Health Committee, introduced a bill, the Health Care PRICE Transparency Act.

The legislation would codify Trump’s healthcare transparency rule and would:

• Impose data sharing standards.
  • Require machine-readable files of all negotiated rates and cash prices between plans and providers, not estimates.
  • Expand price transparency requirements to clinical diagnostic labs, imaging centers, and ambulatory surgical centers.
  • Require pricing data standards including all billing codes for services.
  • Require actual prices for 300 shoppable services with all services by 2025.
  • Require attestation by executives that all prices are accurate and complete.
  • Increase maximum annual penalties to $10,000,000 (includes specific minimum and maximum penalties according to number of hospital beds in the facility).
  • Prevent pre-emption of state price transparency laws, except for ERISA group health plans.
• Codify the Transparency in Coverage (TIC) rule.
• Provide group health plans the right to access, audit, and review claims encounter data.

Braun said that the Health Care Price Transparency Act, would be “bigger than Obamacare” and do far more to reduce costs. He explained, “Reform the healthcare industry by insisting upon competition, transparency, get rid of the barriers of entry and “yes” on minor healthcare for people that can afford it; let the marketplace rule. Take insurance out of it. That would solve all the issues of, what does something cost? Why does it keep going up? It would take the shallow protection away from insurance companies, pharma, and hospitals.”

He continued, “You’re not going to believe, but I got Bernie [Sanders] to introduce it with me, the Health Care Price Transparency Act that would be far bigger than Obamacare to really get at the underlying issues in that we don’t have any skin in the game for consumers, and the supply side is completely cloaked behind closed doors where they don’t expose themselves to competition.”

Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Tina Smith (D-MN), and John Hickenlooper (D-CO) cosponsored the legislation.

Cynthia Fisher, the founder and chairman of Patients Rights Advocate, said in a statement in January:

For too long healthcare consumers, including workers, employers, and unions, have been subject to non-binding estimates and overcharged medical bills because hospitals and health insurers take advantage of an opaque system that hides the true cost of care and coverage. Systemwide healthcare price transparency will improve health outcomes and lower the cost of coverage and care for all Americans. We encourage all senators to support this bill and stand up for patients against industry profiteering.

Braun said that the legislation he and Sanders are proposing will face significant obstacles because the New York Hospital Association is one of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) biggest donors and that most other Republican and Democrat chairmen are “in the same pickle.”

Braun, who is running to be the next governor of the Hoosier state, said that the president of Indiana University Health tried to organize opposition against him because he wants “nothing other than transparency, competition, [and] getting rid of the barriers to entry. I’m going to ask the insurance companies to enable people to pool and associate,” Braun said, referring to Association Health Plans.

He added, “They won’t like any of that.”

Braun said that as governor, he would lead the way to enact significant healthcare reform. “There’s a lot of it we can do state by state. I think you’re going to find other governors starting to do it. Most of them don’t have the guts that it would take to take on the biggest campaign check writer and the biggest industry in your state. I will.”