Americans have delivered the same message in the last two elections: make life affordable again.
They’re tired of working harder for less, while the costs of everything from housing to education to insurance continue to rise. The affordability crisis affects every household, and the biggest driver is the one Washington refuses to seriously address: health care.
Healthcare now consumes almost a fifth of our economy. It is the biggest cost to employers, the fastest-growing burden on families and the quietest drain on national growth. Every dollar companies spend on inflated health care costs is a dollar unavailable for higher wages, new jobs or investments. Every dollar families spend on premiums or out-of-pocket costs is a dollar they cannot use for savings, housing or opportunity. Until we improve healthcare, we cannot improve affordability.
It’s not that Washington is ignoring health care, it’s that it’s thinking about it too narrowly. Politicians are obsessed with temporary subsidies, tax credits and program expansions that make insurance more expensive to subsidize, but never make healthcare itself more affordable. The current battle over the extension of COVID-era insurance subsidies is a perfect example of this. Even Obamacare supporters now admit that the Affordable Care Act has proven to be unaffordable. Their answer is to borrow more money to prop up a system that is getting worse and worse. That’s not reform – it’s surrender.
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Healthcare affordability is essential to making American life affordable again. (iStock)
There are three truths that both sides must face.
First, the system is already too expensive and is stuck in a pattern that guarantees it will become more unaffordable every year.
Second, sixty years of bureaucratic control – public and private – has completely failed to contain costs.
Is Congress holding back millions to save $4,600 on cheaper health insurance?
Third, we must build a new model that relies on patients, doctors, and employers—not massive government and insurance bureaucracies—to create the change Americans want.
That model is not theoretical; it is already working in the rest of our economy. When people have access to clear prices and quality information before making decisions, competition drives innovation, choice and lower costs. Technology has made this possible in every industry, from travel to retail and manufacturing. If the same principles applied to healthcare, we could harness that same power to reduce costs and improve quality.
Instead, our opaque, bureaucratic system hides prices and multiplies middlemen. The average family of four now spends roughly $27,000 a year on health insurance – about the cost of a new Chevrolet or Toyota every twelve months. Most families don’t see the full bill because their employer or the government pays a large portion of it, but that just means their wages are lower. Paying the equivalent of a new car annually for coverage alone is why Americans rank affordability as their top economic concern.
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Worse, no one knows what anything costs – not patients, not families, not even the self-funded employers who pay the claims for their participants. Bills arrive months after care, after going through a maze of third-party administrators, repricers and billing vendors. That secrecy fuels waste, fraud and frustration. It is estimated that 30% to 50% of all healthcare expenditures are administrative rather than medical. In short, the American health care system has more middlemen than medicines.
And who benefits? Powerful interest groups, insurers, advisors and bureaucracies that profit from complexity and confusion. As Tom Cruise shouted in “Jerry Maguire,” “Show me the money.” Behind the speeches and lobbyists defending this broken system are people determined to protect their stake in the bankrupt status quo.
Second, sixty years of bureaucratic control – public and private – has completely failed to contain costs.
Politicians can’t fight every vested interest group, but millions of patients and doctors, armed with real price and quality information, can. Transparency gives power back to those who actually provide and receive care. If they can see what things cost, they can make smarter choices, reward efficiency, and hold wasteful players accountable. Transparency not only lowers prices, but also changes who has power.
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That’s why President Donald Trump’s executive order on price transparency during his first administration was a real breakthrough. It required hospitals and insurers to publish negotiated prices and directed officials through the No Surprises Act to prepare Advance Explanations of Benefits (AEOBs) so Americans could know their costs before receiving care. Trump started the transparency revolution. Under the Biden administration, enforcement stalled and patients never saw the full benefit.
Now Trump has a chance to finish what he started — and make transparency permanent.
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The administration has the authority to act now under its “radical transparency” executive order issued earlier this year, the No Surprises Act, and existing authority under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services should immediately issue and enforce AEOB rules. The Department of Labor must guarantee employers access to complete claims and pricing data while protecting patient privacy. If the administration acts quickly, Americans could start receiving AEOBs in 2026 — and Trump could rightly claim a historic victory on transparency, competition, and higher wages before the midterm elections.
Congress should strengthen this effort by passing the bipartisan Patient Deserve Price Tags Act, led by Republican Senator Roger Marshall of Kansas and Democratic Senator John Hickenlooper of Colorado. The bill secures employers’ access to data and ensures that no third-party administrator can hide prices from the people who pay the bills. The executive can act today; Congress should make it permanent.
When every patient and employer can see the prices, the markets will clean up waste themselves. Transparency gives employers the power to negotiate directly with healthcare providers and patients the opportunity to make wise choices. Public prices create competition that middlemen cannot survive and costs they cannot hide. The ripple effect – lower costs, higher wages, more investment – will strengthen every part of the economy.
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If America truly wants to make life affordable again, we must start with healthcare transparency.
It’s daring. It is feasible. And it’s the biggest step we can take to restore prosperity to working families.
Disclaimer: Gingrich 360 has consulting clients in the healthcare industry who may be affected by changes in healthcare laws.
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