My Upset Primary Victory Shows Voters Are Hungry for Health Care Solutions

Last week, the Trump administration announced that it’s ramping up enforcement of its hospital price transparency rule to overcome widespread noncompliance. “Our message to hospitals is simple: Post your real prices,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “Come into compliance immediately or prepare for serious consequences.” 

Actual, upfront prices, as President Donald Trump’s federal rule requires, are urgently needed to empower consumers to compare and save and ultimately reverse runaway costs. As a state lawmaker, I have seen firsthand the power of price transparency as a political issue beyond Washington. 

Despite being outspent by a 6-to-1 margin, I won reelection by a landslide in last month’s Republican primary for my seat in the Ohio House of Representatives. I attribute much of this victory to my record of pursuing commonsense solutions to the state’s outrageous health care costs. The lesson for other candidates running for office this year, especially conservatives, is to lean into health care reform in general and price transparency in particular.
 
As Trump led on this crucial issue at the federal level, I authored a hospital price transparency bill in Ohio that codified Trump’s rule into state law. It became law 18 months ago and went into effect last April. It requires hospitals to publish their actual prices, not estimates, by health insurance plan. This information finally pulls back the veil on health care costs that have long been hidden until they arrive on bills in the mail weeks after treatment.
 
With upfront prices, Ohioans can protect themselves from hospital price gouging and choose affordable treatments. Employers, who provide coverage for most of Ohio’s working families, can compare costs, steer employees to the best value and reduce plan premiums. With lower health plan expenditures, Ohio businesses can be more competitive, and workers can earn higher pay.
 
Ohio hospital price disclosures are now aggregated online by the free Ohio Hospital Price Finder. Users can look up treatments and spot wildly different costs for the same care. For example, a diagnostic colonoscopy ranges from $842 to $3,525 at Trinity Medical Center East in Steubenville, depending on health coverage. And a knee arthroscopy varies from $1,479 to $6,199. Published prices will create competition, controlling and converging costs just as in every other sector of the economy.
 
Unfortunately, the hospital lobby and entrenched health care interests fought my bill every step of the way. Why? Because hidden prices protect profits.
 
When patients don’t know what they’ll owe until after care is delivered, overcharging proliferates and is almost impossible to fight. Employers and workers absorb those costs through higher insurance premiums, lower wages, and larger out-of-pocket expenses.
 
Thanks to my courageous colleagues in Columbus, hospitals lost that fight. But the special interests were determined to take me out in the primary. In the end, our campaign won decisively because we stood with patients, workers, and employers, and voters couldn’t be fooled. Like most Americans, they are tired of being crushed by health care costs that they didn’t know and often wouldn’t have accepted if they had known about them upfront.
 
Republican candidates—who for too long have run from health care reform—have the opportunity to tap into this frustration in their own campaigns. Price transparency is a market-based, effective solution that requires no new spending, income transfers, or burdensome regulations.
 
Polling shows a bipartisan supermajority of more than 90% of Americans support this reform. That’s because our predatory health care system preys on people of all political persuasions.
 
Following the Trump administration’s lead, my legislation gives consumers in my state the weapons to fight back and substantially reduce costs. Other candidates who believe in free market solutions should join this health care reform train and ride it to public office and an affordable health care future.

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