Despite federal rules that now require hospitals to post prices, many facilities are refusing to disclose their rates. The bottom line is that this lack of transparency hurts patient access to affordable care.
That’s why HB 481 has been introduced in the Virginia General Assembly. It is a simple bill that aims to make the federal rules part of state law. This would make it much harder for hospitals to continue flouting needed price transparency.
The bill was adopted by a 98 to 1 vote in the Virginia House of Delegates. Now it is on the Senate side and hospitals and other establishment “stakeholders,” who benefit from opaqueness, are pulling out all the stops to quash the bill.
In the Senate, the first stop for the bill is the Senate Committee on Health and Education, Health subcommittee. If you are a physician passionate about price transparency who can attend a subcommittee hearing to testify on March 1 at 4pm in Richmond, please let us know ASAP by emailing [email protected] or calling/texting AAPS Business Manager Jeremy Snavely at 520-270-0761.
Whether or not you can attend in person, please take a few short moments to send the subcommittee members a note asking them to support HB 481.
You can get a message on the way with just a couple clicks using this link: https://p2a.co/rIaZmMW
Thank you for speaking out! Your voice makes a difference!
