Will Health Insurance Costs Go Down? Trump Outlines Plan To Put Hospital Costs Online

President Trump and two of his potential rivals in the 2020 race for the White House talked healthcare Friday, with the president announcing rules that would make prices for medical procedures available online.

Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Elizabeth Warren released her plan for reducing healthcare costs and former Vice President Joe Biden criticized her Medicare-for-all plan as ill-conceived.

Trump said the Department of Health and Human Services is finalizing a rule that requires hospitals to display prices for shoppable services and requires insurance companies to provide cost estimates to consumers in advance of service.

“Together, these two rules represent the most aggressive actions taken by any administration to put health price information in the hands of patients,” the White House said in a statement.

The administration noted prices for the same services vary widely with no correlation to quality of care.

The president also signed an executive order that seeks to improve Medicare. He also is seeking to make lower-priced generics more available to reduce prescription costs and expand options like Health Reimbursement Arrangements and Association Health Plans.

Warren said she would reduce costs in U.S. healthcare by eliminating profiteering and engineering a complete conversion to Medicare-for-all, eliminating private health insurance in favor of a single-payer, government-run health insurance coverage plan.

She said the first step cutting costs is to reduce the influence of the pharmaceutical and insurance industries.

Warren has been pushing Medicare-for-all as a means of correcting the inequalities in the current system.

“We can fix this system,” Warren said in a press release. “Medicare for All is the best way to cover every person in America at the lowest possible cost because it eliminates profiteering from our health care and leverages the power of the federal government to rein in spending.”

Biden, who advocates adding a public option to the Affordable Care Act and making other improvements to the ACA without altering access to private insurance, criticized Warren’s plan as ill-conceived and accused her of trying to “muddy the waters” further.

“Her latest Friday news dump on this subject doesn't change the reality that Medicare-for-all will deny Americans the right to choose their insurance by eliminating employer-sponsored insurance, punish employers and states who have done right by their employees by providing robust healthcare plans and raising taxes for working people in this country,” Biden said in a press release.

Biden has previously said Warren employed “mathematical gymnastics” in crafting her plan.