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I'm working for you in the Senate to lower health care costs for Hoosiers.
When I ran for Senate, I told Hoosiers I would make health care one of my top priorities. I took on this issue in my own business in my hometown, and I haven’t been afraid to go up against the big health care lobbies to get results.
In my term in the Senate, I have been named the Most Effective Republican Senator on the issue of Health by the nonpartisan Center for Effective Lawmaking.
I’ve been proud to win victories for you on this issue, like my bill forming the basis for President Trump’s price transparency executive order, ending President Biden’s unconstitutional vaccine mandate for private businesses, and my ALS Disability Insurance Act which eliminated the five-month waiting period before patients with ALS could access benefits.
I firmly believe that no American should go broke because they get sick or have a bad accident, and the way to lower costs is by introducing market competition and transparency back into our broken health care system.
The health care system is rife with misaligned industry incentives and excessive costs, driving us down an unsustainable path.
In order to fix the entire industry, Congress needs to take action and be innovative.
Here’s an update of what I’ve been working on for you in the Senate on health care.
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Senator Braun’s Health Care PRICE Transparency Act 2.0 would lower health care costs for Hoosiers
When Americans go to the hospital, they often don’t know what services will cost before they pay.
This forces patients to rely on their insurance to pay as much as possible and negotiate rates with providers, and robs Americans of the ability to shop around for a better deal.
True competition would drive down prices like it does in every other industry.
There’s also a lack of transparency in agreements between insurance and providers.
There are many examples of employer-sponsored insurance plans reviewing the claims data for their employees and discovering egregious payment disparities and wasteful practices.
Congress needs to pull back the curtain.
The Health Care PRICE Transparency Act 2.0 will finally introduce true transparency into health care pricing by requiring all negotiated rates and cash prices between plans and providers be accessible. The bill requires actual prices be published for all health care services.
“It’s wrong that the same procedure can be 20 times more expensive in one hospital than in another, and there’s no other industry where consumers are in the dark on the price of what they’re buying. Knowing what health care services cost will lower health care prices because Americans can shop around and get the best deal rather than relying on insurers to negotiate with providers which drives the price up for everything."
The Health Care PRICE Transparency Act 2.0 is earning broad bipartisan support in Congress and across the country as Americans learn how revealing true health care prices will drive down costs.
"The Health Care PRICE Transparency Act 2.0 will pull the curtain back and put the power back in the hands of the American people, introducing real market competition into the health care industry and bringing down prices."
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Promising Pathway Act: A bill to give patients with life-threatening diseases access to promising treatments
When you’ve been diagnosed with a rare and progressive disease, access to promising treatments is the difference between life and death.
It takes about 6 years on average for a drug to get through the FDA’s fastest drug approval pathway – and even longer before patients can actually take them. Those with diseases like ALS simply don’t have time to wait.
That’s where Promising Pathway comes in. This solution will create a conditional approval pathway for drugs intended to treat rare, progressive and congenital diseases. Think of it like a “passing lane” for drugs that have shown safety and evidence of effectiveness for patients with life-threatening diseases who don’t have time to wait.
Promising Pathway has seen a groundswell of support from both sides of the aisle and the patient community in the past year.
Promising Pathway 2.0 was introduced by Senator Mike Braun, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Senator Kevin Cramer, Senator Joe Manchin, Senator Eric Schmitt, Senator Alex Padilla, Senator J.D. Vance, Senator Cory Booker, Senator Josh Hawley, Senator Peter Welch, and Senator Lisa Murkowski.
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Senator Braun calls out rampant Medicare fraud, successfully secures full fraud audit of Medicare
When Senator Braun learned that scammers were stealing billions of dollars from Medicare through fraudulent charges, he took action on a full fraud audit of Medicare to protect seniors.
Every dollar that goes to scam artists is a dollar that isn’t going to help Hoosier seniors.
Senator Braun, Senator Rick Scott, and Senator JD Vance secured the Inspector General audit, which is currently being conducted by the the Government Accountability Office.
“The victims of Medicare fraud are often the most vulnerable Americans. I’m calling for a full audit of Medicare so we can get to the bottom of the rampant fraud, waste, and abuse. It’s beyond alarming that this recent case of alleged Medicare fraud involving overbilling for urinary catheters went undetected for over a year and accounted for an additional $2.7 billion in taxpayer spending. American seniors deserve better.”
Watch Senator Braun’s interview on Mornings with Maria about why he’s blowing the whistle on Medicare fraud to protect Hoosier seniors.
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Read more about Senator Braun’s work on health care price transparency and lowering prescription drug costs for Hoosiers in this op-ed with Indiana Dr. Tarek Kteleh:
Indiana hospitals and others across the country have been patting themselves on the back for allowing consumers to actually see what something will cost before they buy it. Indiana hospitals ranked fourth in transparency in a new analysis by Turquoise Health.
The health care industry is 20% of the U.S. economy. Finally getting around to telling Americans what your product costs is nothing to be proud of.
There’s an incentive for hospitals obscure their prices: transparency reveals how broken the health care system truly is.
As Indiana Capital Chronicle’s Leslie Bonilla Muniz noted in a recent story, the exact same hip or knee replacement at hospitals 30 minutes away from each other in Indiana could cost either $43,000 or three times that. A woman giving birth could cost $2,000 in Bedford or ten times that in Indy.
To lower the costs of medical services and medications for Americans, we need more market competition so that providers have an incentive to lower prices. Competition drives down costs because patients can compare prices and choose what’s best for their budget.
In fact, a survey conducted this year found that over half of healthcare consumers do not research different pricing options before receiving a medical service, but said they would if prices were disclosed in a less confusing manner.
A radically transparent healthcare marketplace will mean patients can shop around and find the best price, just like we do for every other product or service.
Take laser eye surgery, or LASIK, for example. In the 1990s, the average cost of a LASIK surgery held steady at about $2,000 per eye. LASIK surgery is generally not covered by insurance because it is considered cosmetic or elective, so patients were able to shop around for the best quote around town for their procedure.
As providers innovated and offices competed for patients, the cost of laser eye surgery fell. During a rush in demand for the surgery in the late 1990s, the price per eye fell by 20%.
Today, many patients receive LASIK surgery for closer to $1,000 per eye. This is possible when a medical service has true competition, and patients can compare services in a free market.
One price transparency solution that would create real change for patients is the Health Care Price Transparency Act. This bill will require hospitals to disclose the cost of an item or service set by the hospital.
This bill also requires hospitals to create a free online price estimator so patients can receive an estimate of the costs they will be responsible for paying to a hospital before they receive the service. In order for a hospital to participate in Medicare, they will need to maintain compliance with these transparency requirements.
President Trump issued a rule to this effect, but has been subject to several lawsuits from hospital groups and other interested parties intending to shut it down and keep prices hidden. As of August of this year, only 16% of hospitals were complying with the transparency rule. This noncompliance is due in part to President Biden’s Center for Medicare Services unwillingness to enforce the rule fully.
We need to set this rule into law. The Health Care Price Transparency Act will do that, and help Americans make more informed choices in the marketplace.
Services are only half of the equation. Drug prices also need to be radically transparent to lower costs for consumers.
It’s not just pharmaceutical companies and pharmacies that decide how much a drug will cost, it’s also a middle man in the equation called a pharmacy benefit manager, or PBM.
PBMs negotiate price rebates between drug manufacturers and patients. The current system allows for PBMs and insurers to keep these rebates, which should be passed along to patients. When PBMs pocket a portion of the rebates, drug manufacturers just raise the prices to account for the difference .
The Drug Price Transparency Act will end this strange arrangement that’s raising the costs of prescription drugs. The result will be a more transparent prescription drug market, and ultimately lower list prices and out-of-pocket payments for patients.
These solutions are not cure-alls. We also need to crack down on anti-competitive behavior, such as some large network hospitals forcing patients to pay more for services as inpatients by buying up independent health clinics, as well as many other uncompetitive practices in the health care system that are driving up prices.
But pulling back the curtain on costs for services and drugs is a solution that will help inject some competition into the health care system and lower prices in the long-run.
Politicians who do not support price transparency must answer the following question: What benefit are the American people getting from these prices remaining hidden?
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