Washington – The ERISA Industry Committee (ERIC) today praised the Trump Administration’s final Transparency in Coverage (TiC) rule, issued by the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and the Treasury. ERIC called the rule an important step toward giving employers and the millions of Americans who get health coverage through work, clear and usable information about what health care actually costs.
Since 2022, most insurance companies and employer health plans have been required to post the prices they negotiate with doctors and hospitals. But the files were so large and cluttered, few employers or patients could navigate them. The updated rule organizes prices by provider network, strips out “ghost” rates for services a provider would likely never bill, and requires plans to give members cost estimates.
“Employers buy health care for their workers, and for too long the prices have been hidden or buried,” said James Gelfand, President and CEO of ERIC. “The first round of price data opened the books. This rule makes the data usable by a general audience. For large employers that provide coverage to tens of millions of workers and their families, better data means we can spot when one hospital charges more than another for the same procedure, negotiate harder, build better networks, and cut waste that drives up costs for employers and employees alike.”
For workers, better price information can mean knowing before an appointment that the same MRI costs far less at one imaging center than at another. For employers, it means seeing which doctors and hospitals deliver good care at a fair price and steering workers toward them. It also helps employers meet their legal duty to spend health plan dollars wisely on behalf of their employees.
ERIC will keep working with the Administration and Congress to make sure better price information leads to real competition and lower costs. That includes clearer prescription drug price data, which the Departments have said they will address separately, and full access for employers to their own health plans’ claims data, so they can track spending on behalf of their workers.