House Committee Passes Bills Requiring Hospital Executives to Certify Prices and Medicare Advantage Plans to Open Their Books

The same July 15, 2026, markup by the House Committee on Ways and Means produced six additional health care bills focused on hospital price transparency and Medicare Advantage plan accountability. Under the price transparency measures, hospitals would be required to present prices in a format consumers can check before receiving services, going beyond the machine-readable rate files that federal rules have mandated since 2021. Hospital chief executives would be required to personally certify the accuracy of their institutions' published prices, raising individual accountability for non-compliance. For Medicare Advantage insurers, the package would require public disclosure of revenues, administrative spending, and the share of premium revenue spent on patient care. Insurers would file annual reports with CMS on prior authorization use, approval rates, denial rates, and average decision times, and CMS would publish those reports. A separate measure would require nursing facilities and skilled nursing facilities to permit two designated essential caregivers per resident to visit in person during declared public health emergencies, responding to blanket visitation restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic. The package also includes a provision expanding Medicare payment for remote patient monitoring in rural areas. All seven bills await a vote by the full House.