Your hospital bill just became public—but will prices actually drop?
H.R. 9645 — Health Care Price Certainty for All Americans Act · Filed by Jason Smith (R-MO) · Introduced Jul 13, 2026 · Reported out
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What it does
This bill requires hospitals, ambulatory surgical centers, clinical diagnostic laboratories, and imaging providers that receive Medicare payments to publicly disclose their standard charges and negotiated prices for medical services, starting January 1, 2027 for hospitals and 2028 for other providers. Patients and the public gain access to price information through machine-readable formats and consumer-friendly tools, enabling price comparison before receiving care. The bill also requires health insurers to provide cost-sharing estimates to patients upon request by 2029.
Why we flagged it
The bill's core mechanism is a regulatory mandate requiring Medicare-participating providers to disclose pricing information to the public. It is fundamentally a transparency and consumer-protection measure, not a subsidy, carve-out, or deregulation.
What the text implies
- Price disclosure may reveal wide variation in negotiated rates across payers, potentially triggering political pressure for rate regulation or narrowing of negotiated discounts.
- Smaller hospitals and rural providers face compliance costs (attestation, tool maintenance, audits) that may be disproportionate to their size; the bill includes hardship waivers but caps their use.
- The 'price estimator tool' safe harbor (deemed compliance before 2029) may allow hospitals to delay full compliance by maintaining a tool that does not cover all services or payers.
- Disclosure of payer-specific negotiated rates, even in deidentified form, may expose proprietary contract terms and reduce negotiating leverage for smaller payers.
- The bill sunsets the health plan price comparison tool requirement (IRC 9819) effective 2029, replacing it with cost-sharing transparency—a narrower disclosure obligation.
Section numbers refer to the bill text the analysis read — linked under Primary records below.
Who it affects
Ordinary citizens gain meaningful transparency into healthcare pricing—a long-standing information asymmetry—enabling informed shopping and negotiation. The bill imposes compliance costs on providers but channels enforcement through civil penalties, not patient liability. However, the bill's effectiveness depends on implementation quality and whether disclosed prices actually drive competition or merely inform without changing behavior.
Who stands to gain
- Healthcare price-comparison platforms and software vendors (compliance tools, data aggregation)
- Consulting firms specializing in healthcare compliance and pricing analytics
- Potential indirect benefit to large insurers and employers with sophisticated data analytics capabil
Named in the bill
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Hospitals (specified hospitals, critical access hospitals, rural emergency hospitals), Ambulatory surgical centers, Clinical diagnostic laboratories, Imaging service providers, Third-party payers (insurers), Health plans (group health plans), Department of Health and Human Services (Secretary)
Where it stands
- Jul 13, 2026 — Introduced · Congress.gov: “Introduced in House”
- Jul 13, 2026 — Referred to House Committee on Education and Workforce and House Committee on Ways and Means · Congress.gov: “Referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and in addition to the Committees on Ways and Means, and…”
- Jul 15, 2026 — Markup held in committee · Congress.gov: “Committee Consideration and Mark-up Session Held”
- Jul 15, 2026 — Reported out of committee · Congress.gov: “Ordered to be Reported in the Nature of a Substitute by the Yeas and Nays: 25 - 15”
Dates and quoted wording are Congress.gov's action record; the timeline shows status changes, not every procedural step.
Money around this bill
2 lobbying clients named this bill on 2 disclosure filings across 1 quarter, Jun 2026 to Jun 2026. Those filings disclosed $880,000 in lobbying spend. A filing names 16 bills on average, so that figure is what each filing reported, not a share belonging to this bill.
More lobbying clients named this bill than 41% of bills with at least one filing.
Jason Smith, the sponsor, reported $2,951,280 in PAC receipts in the 2026 cycle.
- Federation of American Hospitals — $710,000 on 1 filing
- International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers — $170,000 on 1 filing
Lobbying Disclosure Act filings through Jul 20, 2026. A filing shows who paid to lobby on a bill it names, not what changed.
How this was measured
Analysis — Quorum's AI read the bill text published by Congress.gov (50,012 characters) on Jul 14, 2026. Section numbers in the findings refer to that text, linked below; transparency and hidden-provision scores are compared against the median of 16,222 analysed bills.
Status and sponsors — Congress.gov's bill record — actions, committee referrals and cosponsors — loaded nightly. The timeline shows status changes, not every procedural action.
Money — Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act filings whose specific-issue field names this bill for quarters ending Jun 2026 to Jun 2026. A filing's amount is reported whole beside the median number of bills a filing names; it is never divided across them. PAC receipts are FEC-reported contributions to the sponsor's candidate committee in the 2026 cycle.
As of — lobbying records through Jul 20, 2026 · page rendered 2026-10-20.
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