Competition and Transparency
Transparency is integral both to reduce health care costs and improve the quality of care. Specific changes in statute, and to the current regulatory regime, could significantly strengthen transparency in the health care system, thus giving rise to better care for patients, more competition, greater value, and improved quality and safety. Experience has shown that competition and information are critical to a functioning marketplace for any product, and health care is no exception. Employers are major innovators in health care, and transparency will accelerate our member companies’ ability to improve benefits and coverage, increase affordability for patients, and drive efficiency, quality, and value in the system.
- ERIC One-Pager: Full Transparency is Needed to Help Lower Health Care Costs
Outlines why pricing and quality transparency are essential to drive affordability and competition and emphasizes the employer community’s role in advancing transparency policies. - ERIC One-Pager: Congress Must End Arbitrary Price Increases and Unfair Contracting Practices
- Calls on lawmakers to rein in opaque pricing tactics and anti-competitive health care contracting and details needed reforms to protect payers and patients from unchecked provider leverage.
- Partnership For Employer-sponsored Coverage (P4ESC) Statement to the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health hearing, “Lowering Health Care Costs for All Americans: Examining Policies to Increase Health Care Transparency”
- P4ESC respectfully urges the Subcommittee to advance bipartisan transparency reforms that strengthen employer-sponsored coverage, empower plan sponsors with access to their own data, and ensure that health care markets work for the employers, workers, and families who fund them.
- ERIC Statement to the House Of Representatives United States House Committee on Ways & Means hearing, “Full Committee Hearing with Health System Ceos”
- The statement explores the impacts of rising health care costs on patients and large employers and ways Congress can ensure quality health care is more affordable and accessible.
- ERIC Statement to the U.S. House Of Representatives House Committee on Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee “Lowering Health Care Costs for All Americans: An Examination of The U.S. Provider Landscape”
- The statement urges with Congress to advance policies that improve health care access, affordability, quality, transparency, and patient safety, including site-neutral payments and fairness in contracting.
- ERIC Statement to the House Budget Committee hearing “Reversing the Curse: Skyrocketing Health Care Costs and America’s Fiscal Future”
- This statement urges Congress to advance policies that benefit employees’ and patients’ wallets, including moving forward with the Healthy Competition for Better Care Act and the Eliminating Thickets to Increase Competition (ETHIC) Act.
- ERIC Written Statement: “Lowering Health Care Costs for All Americans: An Examination of the Prescription Drug Supply Chain,” Subcommittee on Health U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce
- ERIC’s President & CEO James Gelfand testified before the House Energy & Commerce Committee in February 2026, discussing how the current prescription drug supply chain imposes unsustainable costs on employers and patients.
- ERIC Statement to House Energy and Commerce Committee Hearing on Health Care Affordability
- Provides employer perspectives on drivers of rising health care costs and recommends transparency reforms as foundational to any affordability strategy.
- Alliance for Fair Health Pricing Statement for the Energy & Commerce Committee and House Ways & Means Committee Hearings on Health Insurance Affordability.
- A written testimony with concrete recommendations such as site-neutral payment reforms, price transparency, and banning anticompetitive contracting tactics that will lower costs and make health care more affordable for all Americans.
- ERIC Response to House Budget Health Task Force
- Highlights the importance of transparency in addressing health care spending growth and urges actionable policy changes to empower purchasers with pricing data.
- ERIC Affordability RFI Response
- Responds to federal inquiry with employer insights on the relationship between transparency, affordability, and market dynamics and proposes transparency-focused improvements.
- Consumers F1rst Statement to the Senate Finance Committee on Consolidation
- Explains how consolidation stifles competition and inflates prices and advocates for transparency and competitive safeguards.
- Consumers F1rst Statement to House Energy and Commerce Committee on Transparency and Competition
- Highlights the harms of market concentration and opaque pricing and pushes for enforcement of existing transparency rules and legislative updates.
- Health Pricing Stakeholder Letter
- Multi-stakeholder call to strengthen and enforce price transparency regulations that emphasize employer and consumer harms caused by hidden prices.
- Lame Duck Affordability Joint Sign-On Letter
- Collective support for policies advancing affordability through transparency and contracting reform.
