| House lawmakers on Wednesday will revisit one of Washington’s favorite health policy ideas: transparency. The Energy and Commerce health subcommittee is set to consider a package of bills Wednesday morning aimed at exposing more information regarding hospital prices, insurance practices and health care ownership. It comes after the panel held a series of hearings to tackle health care affordability issues — inviting experts and industry executives from hospitals, insurers, and drugmakers to testify about how to lower the cost of treatments and services for patients. The committee said in a memo that a primary consensus coming out of those previous hearings was that “meaningful price transparency has the potential to help consumers and employers make more informed decisions about the cost and quality of care.” The bills under consideration fall into three main categories: - Price transparency: Expanding requirements for hospitals, insurers and Medicare Advantage plans to disclose prices and payments.
- Insurance accountability: Requiring more information about claim denials, prior authorization practices, broker compensation and Medicare Advantage operations.
- Ownership and market transparency: New reporting requirements on who controls health care companies and providers.
This isn’t Congress’s first rodeo when it comes to health price transparency. There appeared to be momentum when the House passed a package of proposals called the Lower Costs, More Transparency Act in 2023. The fact that the panel is picking up similar legislation with the same title shows you how far that effort went. But it’s not for a lack of attempts — or popularity among lawmakers on Capitol Hill. Members on both sides of the aisle have expressed support and want to be able to campaign on ideas they believe lower costs, as well as address consumer frustration with the health care system. Voters have repeatedly said that the cost of health care is their primary worry. Adam Buckalew, founder of lobbying firm alb solutions, wrote in a note to clients that “the issue lets lawmakers appear aggressive on costs without immediately choosing between benefit cuts or major coverage expansions.” Buckalew, once a GOP staffer on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, represents clients including insurers Cigna, CVS Health, Elevance Health and Humana. → He tells me that the package gives Republican lawmakers an agenda that “can be sold as pro-patient, pro-employer and anti-health system — depending on which stakeholder is in the room.” WHAT’S NEXT The legislative efforts, broadly, would codify and expand existing transparency regulations that have been updated several times in the last five years. Now that those updates have been completed, a GOP spokesperson for the Energy and Commerce Committee said that the hearing provides an effort to “find points of consensus to where we can get these policies across the finish line.” While most of the policies being discussed are bipartisan, Democrats have been balking at the GOP’s focus on affordability as Americans lose their health insurance. Last week, Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (New Jersey), the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, released a report with the Senate Finance Committee’s top Democrat, Ron Wyden (Oregon), detailing what they say are the negative impacts of Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act. “Health care prices are skyrocketing, hospitals are closing, and doctors and nurses are being laid off,” said Pallone in a statement. Although action isn’t expected in the near term, given the tight legislative calendar before the midterm elections in November, some lobbyists argue it could become a legislative candidate to “clear the decks” during the lame-duck session before the next Congress. Carol Skenes, the chief of staff at Turquoise Health, a company that runs a price transparency platform for health care costs, tells me that the “landscape is meaningfully different” than it was in 2023, when there was momentum behind transparency policies. The pricing data, based on machine-readable files, are better now than they were then, and there have been advancements in the third-party apps that allow patients to shop for care, said Skenes, who is scheduled to testify at the hearing on Wednesday. “The industry has matured from debating whether the [machine-readable files] data is directly useful to paving the way to understanding the cost of care for patients, employers and other stakeholders at scale,” she said. WHAT TO WATCH The Senate is hammering out bipartisan negotiations of one of the bills under consideration in the House, the Patients Deserve Price Tags Act. Patient advocacy groups and transparency proponents have rallied around the measure in recent years, so it’s worth watching which legislative effort gains the most momentum. One health care lobbyist argued that if the policies aren’t undertaken before next year — and the balance of power shifts in the House — a new Democratic majority would likely focus on the expired enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, and on pushing back on Trump administration policies impacting health care coverage. “Yes, they could do it next year. But it’s not their number one ” priority, the Democratic lobbyist said. The race to become Iowa’s next governor could be one of the biggest political tests for the Make America Healthy Again movement. Zach Lahn, who narrowly secured the GOP nomination for the state’s top job, heavily campaigned using rhetoric focused on the impact of pesticides on peoples’ health, which aligns with the MAHA principles championed by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., report The Post’s Rachel Roubein, Lauren Weber and Clara Ence Morse. → As my colleagues put it: Lahn took a stance once unthinkable for Republicans in the Corn Belt: Big Agriculture is making Americans sick. “The [MAHA] movement is real,” Lahn told The Post. “Whether you’re left or right, you don’t want our kids getting sick. You want to have real food. You want to make sure your environmental toxins are minimized. And you want low cancer rates.” Lahn confirmed to my colleagues that he met Kennedy last summer, and they talked “a little bit about the race” when he was considering running, but mostly about agriculture. Lahn said he called Kennedy briefly after he won the primary last week, and that Kennedy was a big motivation for why he wanted to run in the first place. Messaging on vaccines, another Kennedy priority, hadn’t been a major part of Lahn’s campaign. But he attracted support from critics of vaccines — including immunization mandates — such as Stand for Health Freedom. Lahn said that he wanted to pull mRNA coronavirus shots off the market and to end vaccine requirements to attend schools, a position that has concerned public health experts who fear a resurgence of preventable diseases. He told The Post that vaccinations shouldn’t be a “requirement to participate in society.” Lahn won the state’s GOP gubernatorial primary with about 38 percent of the vote, beating Rep. Randy Feenstra, whom President Donald Trump endorsed days before the election, by just one percentage point. Lahn is now set to face off against his Democratic opponent, Iowa State Auditor Rob Sand, in November. Read the full story: “GOP nominee for governor did the unthinkable in Iowa: Attack Big Agriculture.” - Five diabetes researchers were removed from the American Diabetes Association’s annual meeting Friday after distributing copies of an editorial criticizing the Trump administration’s cuts to biomedical research funding, The Post’s Carolyn Y. Johnson reports.
The group said it was quietly handing out the article ahead of a scheduled appearance by National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya, who was ultimately replaced as keynote speaker. MedPage Today first reported the incident. Researchers described the move as censorship, while the association said the attendees violated the conference code of conduct. Read the full story: “Diabetes researchers ejected from conference after criticizing White House.” - Modeling released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Friday warns that the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda could rival or surpass the West Africa epidemic that occurred in 2014 to 2016 if containment efforts falter, The Post’s Lena H. Sun reports.
In the agency’s worst-case scenario, more than 20,000 cases could occur within three months if only 20 percent of infected people are identified and isolated quickly. Officials stressed the projections are planning scenarios, not forecasts. → The outbreak has been difficult to control because it spread undetected for weeks, is occurring in conflict-affected areas and involves the Bundibugyo strain, which lacks approved vaccines or treatments. The World Health Organization has reported nearly 400 confirmed cases and almost 80 deaths. Read the full story: “Congo outbreak could rival the largest Ebola epidemic on record, CDC warns.” “The 25 highest-paid CEOs in biopharma for 2025 with $25M+ paydays,” Andrew Dunn reports at Endpoints News. “What ProPublica Found in the Genetic Code of America’s Measles Outbreaks,” ProPublica’s Nat Lash and Patricia Callahan report. “Kennedy Shows Minimal Engagement With Vast Health Portfolio,” Sheryl Gay Stolberg writes at the New York Times. This newsletter is published by WP Intelligence, The Washington Post’s subscription service for professionals that provides business, policy and thought leaders with actionable insights. WP Intelligence operates independently from The Washington Post newsroom. Learn more about WP Intelligence. | 
