Opinion: Texans Want Change, Demand Hospital Price Transparency.
By West Cuthbert, American Resolve Director
It’s rare to see overwhelming bipartisan consensus on just about anything these days, but that’s why these new poll numbers should catch the attention of Texas lawmakers. According to a new poll, 93 percent of Texas voters are demanding hospital price transparency.
A recent survey of 600 likely Texas voters, commissioned by American Resolve, shows voters are tired of hospital plans they see as confusing, opaque, and unaccountable. Nine in ten respondents say healthcare costs keep rising. Seven in ten believe hospitals are failing to keep care affordable. More than half have received unexpected, excessive medical bills in the past year.
The struggle is real and palpable. Behind each of these numbers are real families across the Lone Star State absorbing very real financial burdens.
While nonprofit hospital executives often earn 60 times more than the average worker, hospital giants hide behind tax-exempt status, fail to provide real charity care, aggressively pursue vulnerable patients for payment, and ignore federal price transparency laws.
This wave of voter frustration comes as the Texas House Select Committee on Healthcare Affordability recently convened a two-day hearing on skyrocketing hospital costs and prices. Meanwhile in Washington, the House Ways & Means Committee—including four Texas Representatives—is eyeing legislation that would force nonprofit hospitals to open the books on financial aid programs, charity care spending, and their use of the 340B drug pricing program.
Congress created the 340B drug discount program in 1992 with good intentions to help those most in need. The law mandated that drug companies provide deep discounts on prescription drugs to small, struggling nonprofit hospitals. In exchange, those hospitals would use the savings to expand services to poor and uninsured patients. Since then, however, the niche program has become the exception that swallows the rule, as major corporate hospital systems have consolidated and monopolized the American health care industry, buying up small hospitals to get in on the drug discounts and leveraging Obamacare changes to massively expand 340B’s scope.
Unsurprisingly, the 340B discounts have disappeared into the vast ledgers of wealthy hospitals, fueling eye-popping executive compensation, luxury facilities, and controversial procedures like transgender surgeries. In fact, these hospitals even sue their patients more often than those that don’t take the discounts. Current law places zero transparency requirements on hospitals for how they use these savings. But one thing’s for sure: with skyrocketing health care costs across Texas and America, the steep drug discounts received by mega-hospitals aren’t making it easier for the average patient.
The hospital lobby is already mobilizing to protect its profits and preserve its tax-exempt status. But as one member of Congress argued, hospitals should be able to demonstrate that those tax benefits are warranted. Transparency is only a threat to those with something to hide.
Nonprofit hospitals benefit from substantial tax breaks funded by Texans, who are also the ones getting stuck with skyrocketing bills. Voters see this plan for what it is, and they’re demanding lawmakers make hospitals play by the rules.
The fix is clear: enforce existing price transparency laws, make hospitals seeking tax-exempt status show the real community benefits they deliver, stop predatory billing, and require public disclosure of executive pay alongside charity care performance. None of these solutions are extreme. All have massive public support as shown by the recent survey.
Powerful institutions need to be held accountable, and Texas leaders should stand up for Texas families. Voters have figured it out between corporate greed and their own financial struggles. The debate over hospital accountability ought to be cut and dry. Ninety-three percent isn’t just a poll number, it’s a mandate. Texans want change, and it’s time lawmakers deliver.
West Cuthbert, Director of American Resolve, previously served as Associate Deputy Secretary at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), where he helped oversee policy and operational initiatives across the department.