Price transparency bill with site-neutral cuts, competition bill advance in House

The House Ways and Means Committee July 26 voted 25-16 to pass the Health Care Price Transparency Act (H.R. 4822), legislation that would impose additional site-neutral payment cuts and regulatory burdens on off-campus hospital outpatient departments, impose additional Medicare sequester cuts on hospitals, and codify and make changes to hospital price transparency regulations.
 
“Site-neutral payment policies fail to account for the fundamental differences between HOPDs and other sites of care,” AHA said in a statement submitted July 26 for the record. “Hospitals and health systems are held to higher regulatory and safety standards than other settings, including for drug administration services. Current payment rates support this higher standard of care to ensure that drugs are safely prepared and administered. For example, unlike independent physicians’ offices, hospitals must take steps to ensure the drug preparation is supervised by a licensed pharmacist, employees are protected from exposure to hazardous drugs, rooms are sterilized to prevent contamination, and they are compliant with other such Food and Drug Administration, U.S. Pharmacopeia and Joint Commission safety standards.”
 
The bill also would codify Hospital Price Transparency Rule requirements, including that hospitals post a machine-readable file of their standard charges and provide a list of at least 300 shoppable services. However, hospitals could no longer use price estimator tools to meet the shoppable services requirement once No Surprises Act Advanced Explanation of Benefit policies are in place.
 
“Requiring hospitals with price estimator tools to invest time and resources in creating a shoppable service list, in addition to complying with the AEOB, is a move in the wrong direction,” AHA wrote.
 
In other action today, the committee voted 23-17 to pass the Providers and Payers COMPETE Act (H.R. 3284), AHA-opposed legislation that would impose new regulatory responsibilities on the Department of Health and Human Services regarding consolidation. 
 
“HHS is not charged with protecting competition and it lacks the necessary expertise in this area,” AHA wrote. “These new responsibilities are unnecessary since two other federal agencies — the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division and the Federal Trade Commission — already have jurisdiction over federal antitrust enforcement. These agencies routinely study, report on and take action to protect competition in the health care sector for the benefit of consumers.”