This bill requires hospitals, ambulatory surgical centers, imaging providers, and clinical labs to publish actual negotiated rates, cash prices, and itemized costs, and puts the purchasing power back where it belongs: in the hands of American patients.
July 18, 2025
The Honorable Roger Marshall, M.D.
U.S. Senator for Kansas
479A Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Senator Marshall,
On behalf of AMAC Action, the advocacy affiliate of the Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC), with over 2 million members nationwide, I write to express our enthusiastic support for your bipartisan legislation, the Patients Deserve Price Tags Act.
For far too long, American patients, especially seniors living on fixed incomes, have been kept in the dark about the true cost of medical care. The lack of transparency in our healthcare system has led to surprise bills, price gouging, and financial hardship for millions, including the most vulnerable in our society. Your bill represents an important step towards fixing this broken system by ensuring that patients can see, understand, and compare healthcare prices before receiving care.
By requiring hospitals, ambulatory surgical centers, imaging providers, and clinical labs to publish actual negotiated rates, cash prices, and itemized costs, your legislation puts the power back where it belongs: in the hands of the American patient. Seniors deserve to know if they are being charged fairly – not after the fact, but when they make their healthcare decisions.
Your legislation reinforces conservative principles of accountability, competition, and personal choice in healthcare. We also appreciate the bill’s provisions to ensure that group health plans and employers have access to claims data, while preventing third-party administrators from hiding vital information. This will help reduce overall healthcare costs, promote innovation, and support AMAC members and their families who are still in the workforce or rely on employer-sponsored retiree coverage.
Thank you for your leadership and for securing a bipartisan commitment to improving the lives of American patients, including seniors.
Sincerely,
Andrew J. Mangione Jr.
Senior Vice President
AMAC Action
Ah, competition. Free enterprise. American entrepreneurship. Return to small town independent businesses. Doctors who care more about their patients than concern about the fifteen-minute appointment limits “suggested” by CMS to counteract the charging limits
created and imposed by the board of directors of that imposing body. Reverse corruption in high places.
I appreciate that AMAC is launching this effort. What is needed even more, though, is to remove “for profit” third parties from the equation or reign them in. Big Pharma, Health Insurance companies, Medical corporations are driving healthcare in America, at the expense of the patients and the doctor-patient relationship. The insurance industry is racketeering and needs to be stopped. Big Pharma cares only to profit and keep people sick so that they may continue to do so. My credentials? 41 years as a licensed healthcare provider.
This what the ACA was claimed to do, instead what actually happened. The insurers should not control pricing but their limiting what they will cover in costs and nor should prices be allowed to continue to rise because of a “guarantee” written into the fine price that allows this. They did this with student loans backed by federal funding and caused the unscrupulous top 10 colleges to raise their college cost to ridiculously high levels because they were “guaranteed” payment .
Big nonprofit organizations are buying out private medical practices. Thus, medical insurance is constantly changing. More so with Original Medicare and Medicare Advantage. These organizations favor supplemental insurance coverage. I would like to know if the hospital or doctor will be accepting the assignment cost from Medicare and what I will have to pay for services rendered?
We need to return to a “not for profit” model for healthcare. Yes, technology is very expensive but no one understands how drug prices or prices for various treatments are decided. It was better when hospitals were there to treat the sick not make as money as they can. It is crazy that the same drug can vary in price from $5.00 to $500.00 for he same 30 day supply. Also, Insurance companies should NOT be making medical decisions such as determining which patient can receive the treatment that has already been discussed and decided upon by a physician and the patient. Insurance companies need to stop second guessing what physicians and patients have already decided!!
My husband was in a motorcycle accident last year and almost died. He was transported to the first hospital, and then another ambulance ride to a trauma center. Both times everyone had his health insurance information and both times they repeatedly sent it to the wrong Blue Cross Blue Shield office. It was a nightmare, not to mention the hospital stay. They threatened us with a collection agency even though it was their fault they didn’t get paid on time. I would like something done about hospitals who repeatedly screw things up and blame the patients.