Senate HELP Committee Poised to Advance Bipartisan Patients Deserve Price Tags Act

WASHINGTON, July 22, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- The U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on Wednesday will mark up S. 2355, the Patients Deserve Price Tags Act, a bipartisan bill that would provide consumers and their employers that sponsor insurance plans with unprecedented access to healthcare provider prices and negotiated rates with insurers.

"Patients deserve price tags, not surprise bills," said U.S. Senator Roger Marshall, M.D. "This is the only bipartisan healthcare reform before Congress today that can begin lowering the cost of living immediately by bringing real competition to our healthcare system. Americans have waited far too long to know what their care will cost before they receive it, and I'm proud to see this commonsense legislation advance to the next stage with overwhelming bipartisan support. It's time to put patients back in charge – not the big hospital systems and insurance companies."

"Right now, Americans walk into a hospital blind and walk out with a bill nobody could have predicted. That's not a health care system — it's a gamble," said Senator John Hickenlooper, who also sits on the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. "Our bill makes hospitals and insurers publish their prices and backs it up with real fines, not empty threats. If we're serious about getting universal coverage and lowering costs, we start by following the money."

"The Patients Deserve Price Tags Act would replace healthcare's blank checks with actual prices, empowering patients and employers to compare options, avoid the risk of surprise bills and reap the benefits of competition found elsewhere across the economy," said Cynthia Fisher, founder and chair of PatientRightsAdvocate.org. "At a time when health insurers are planning massive premium increases, this bipartisan legislation will expose for the first time how exactly they set their prices."

S. 2355, introduced by Sens. Marshall and Hickenlooper and sponsored by 13 Democrats and 12 Republicans, would require hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers, imaging centers and clinical laboratories to publicly disclose actual prices, including negotiated rates and discounted cash prices. It would also enable employers to analyze their health plan claims data and patients to receive detailed, itemized bills.

Public opinion data has shown that over 90% of Americans support requiring hospitals and insurance companies to disclose their discounted cash prices and negotiated rates.

The HELP Committee is scheduled to mark up the legislation at 10 a.m. ET on Wednesday, July 22 in Room 430 of the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

About PatientRightsAdvocate.org

PatientRightsAdvocate.org is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, nonpartisan organization focused on ushering in systemwide healthcare price transparency. Through advocacy, testimony, media, legal research, and grassroots campaigns, the organization seeks actual, upfront healthcare prices that will greatly lower costs through a functional, competitive healthcare marketplace.

SOURCE Patient Rights Advocate