Senate Aging Committee holds hearing on transparency and lowering health care costs; AHA urges Congress to oversee Medicare Advantage plans and improve prior authorization processes

The AHA submitted a statement July 11 for a Senate Special Committee on Aging hearing on health care transparency and lowering health care costs. The AHA highlighted commercial insurer operating methods and prescription drug costs as cost drivers incurred by hospitals and health systems. AHA urged Congress for additional oversight of Medicare Advantage plans to stop tactics that restrict and delay care access and called for regulatory and legislative solutions to improve prior authorization processes. Recent legislative efforts to no longer recognize price estimator tools as a method to meet the shoppable services requirement of the Hospital Price Transparency Rule are also a concern, AHA said. As Congress looks at statutory adjustments to the rule, AHA urged consideration of the changes that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services makes on a regular basis. The most recent changes are related to standardization, new data elements, file accessibility, an accuracy and completeness affirmation and changes to CMS’ monitoring and enforcement processes.