Subject: Re: Boom. The EO I wanted (healthcare pricing)
It won't. Has no chance of raising awareness or promoting transparent behavior. Also, the government has no influence over Medicare/Medicaid pricing, so all those expenditures need to stay hidden from the public.

You're obviously being sarcastic - but I wasn't asking about how posting prices would help. I was asking something more basic. How does issuing this EO get medical providers to start posting prices?

People sometimes mistakenly think that EO's are laws. They're not. EO's can't tell anyone other than federal government employees to do anything. So no actual medical providers have to do anything as a result of this EO.

The prior EO told HHS to draft a regulation to make providers post prices...but they can't do that, unless there's a statute passed by Congress that gives them the power to do it. They weren't able to put together a regulation last time, that I could find - which makes me suspect that there isn't a statute out there to support a reg. And SCOTUS has just put the kibosh on agencies finding old general language and using it as a prop for new regulations that weren't what Congress had in mind.

So....how will this EO actually work to get providers to disclose pricing?