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Regulatory Updates provide quick access to employee benefit regulations, rulings and other guidance released by governmental agencies in the U.S. and Canada.

New updates to this page may be included in Today’s Headlines which is emailed to International Foundation members each business day. Inquiries regarding these updates should be directed to the Benefits Knowledge Center at the International Foundation at (888) 334-3327, option 5 or [email protected].​

 

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Agencies Take Actions to Strengthen Healthcare Price Transparency

May 23, 2025, 05:00 by Amanda Wilke
The U.S. Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and the Treasury (collectively, the departments) took actions to advance the “Making America Healthy Again by Empowering Patients with Clear, Accurate, and Actionable Healthcare Pricing Information” executive order to ensure access to clear, accurate, and actionable information about healthcare prices. 

The departments jointly issued a Request for Information (RFI) seeking public input on how to improve prescription drug price transparency. The RFI seeks input regarding:
  • The prescription drug price disclosure requirements, including information on existing prescription drug file data elements;
  • Information on implementation generally, such as the ability of health plans to access necessary data for reporting; and 
  • State approaches and innovation. 
Comments are due June 2, 2025.

The departments also released updated guidance, including Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), for health plans and issuers that sets a clear applicability date for publishing an enhanced technical format for disclosures. The improvements seek to reduce file size by requiring exclusion of duplicative data, reducing unnecessary data fields, and will include updates to better contextualize the data, making it more meaningful to ultimately achieve greater transparency.

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) released guidance to strengthen the Hospital Price Transparency requirements, requiring hospitals to post the actual prices of items and services, not estimates.

CMS also issued an RFI to gather public feedback to identify challenges and improve compliance and enforcement processes related to the transparent reporting of complete, accurate, and meaningful pricing data by hospitals. CMS encourages input from employers who may use the data for contract negotiations.

Comments are due July 21, 2025.

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