On Monday, the HHS and Labor and Treasury Departments finalized a rule meant to strip out junk cluttering cost disclosures, among other reforms. Employers cheered the changes.

The Trump administration has overhauled the rules requiring health insurers to disclose the prices they negotiate with hospitals, doctor’s offices and other providers, with the goal of making those costs clearer and more usable for the public.

Most insurance companies and employer health plans have been publicly posting their negotiated rates each month since 2022, when the “Transparency in Coverage” (TiC) rules went into effect. But the disclosures — comprised of gargantuan data files often filled with cluttered and ambiguous information — have been near-impossible to navigate or understand, even for experienced researchers, experts say.

On Monday, the HHS and Labor and Treasury Departments issued a final rule patching up gaps in the price transparency requirements, stripping out junk in the data, standardizing file formats and increasing accountability for insuers.

“Greater transparency drives competition, reduces price disparities, and helps lower healthcare costs, a key priority for the Trump Administration,” CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said in a statement. “At the heart of this rule is a simple idea: People should know what their health insurance will cover and what they will need to pay before receiving medical care, not after the bill arrives.”

Stakeholders cheered the changes, saying they would make it easier for employers and other plan fiduciaries to lower unnecessary spending, and for consumers to select cheaper sites of care. However, the administration did not finalize certain proposals that would have made price disclosures even more robust.

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