Subject: Re: Boom. The EO I wanted (healthcare pricing)
There are already requirements in place for price disclosures, the hospitals and what not aren't following them:

Sure - hospitals that exceed a certain size are required to post certain prices. That's been on the books for a while (before Trump), because there's a statute that says they have to do that.

Do you want more enforcement of that rule? Generally speaking, enforcement requires agency staff and spending. You only get as much enforcement as you have employees that are investigating claims and reviewing compliance and bringing enforcement actions. That's very much not on the cards these days, though.

CMS (and Obamacare provisions generally) are in the sights of DOGE, so it's pretty unlikely that hospitals are going to be made to comply even with existing requirements. DOGE is going to fillet CMS down to size like all of the other agencies that do things that haven't historically enjoyed broad Republican support (like defense), so I wouldn't hold out hope that enforcement is going to improve:

https://www.healthcare-brew.co...

What is this rule?

A rule implementing disclosure of what insurance companies will cover for services. It modifies regulations that were part of Obamacare, which imposed a lot of requirements on health care plans. But the rules don't require health care providers (other than the hospitals already subject to them) to disclose anything.

As an aside, I don't think those rules survive the new SCOTUS decisions on agency power, since they rely on a catch-all clause that SCOTUS now discourages from being interpreted broadly. From the discussion on legal authority in the rule:

Several commenters contended that section 1311(e)(3)(A)(ix) of PPACA does not give the Departments statutory authority to require that plans and issuers make the rates they have negotiated with providers and out-of-network allowed amounts publicly available. The commenters noted that section 1311(e)(3)(A) of PPACA enumerates eight specific categories of information subject to the transparency in coverage mandate followed by a ninth “catchall” category consisting of “other information as determined appropriate by the Secretary.”71 These commenters maintained that the Secretary of HHS’s authority under section 1311(e)(3)(A)(ix) of PPACA is insufficient to support a requirement to publicize negotiated rates because they are not sufficiently similar to the other categories of information identified under section 1311(e)(3)(A) of PPACA.

The Departments disagree with these comments and are of the view that the information required to be disclosed under this rule fits squarely within the scope of information that plans and issuers may be required to disclose under section 1311(e)(3)(A)(ix) of PPACA and section 2715A of the PHS Act.

In years past, I think SCOTUS might have sided with the Departments - but under their current jurisprudence, look for the commenters to get the courts to throw this type of effort out as exceeding the purview of the agencies under the statute.