FTC Chairman Urges Healthcare Services Companies to Ensure Price Transparency

Healthcare services companies must provide patients with pricing information that is timely, accurate and complete, Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson said in letters sent to 24 of the largest such companies in the nation.

Ferguson sent the letters to remind the companies of their legal obligations and to highlight concerns that healthcare services companies may violate the FTC Act if they fail to provide transparent price information, the FTC said in a Monday (Oct. 5) press release.

In a template of the letter sent to the healthcare services companies, Ferguson said that the letter is intended to encourage all healthcare service providers to review their price-transparency practices and that it is not intended to be an assessment of the recipient’s practices.

The letters emphasize that while the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ price transparency rules establish a critical baseline for providing pricing information, a healthcare facility’s compliance with those rules does not ensure that it has met its obligations under Section 5 of the FTC Act, according to the release.

Example of actions that may be deceptive include failing to disclose the price of a healthcare service, making a disclosure that is incomplete because it omits physician or facility fees or covers only part of the expected course of care, and making a disclosure that is inaccurate, the release said.

Ferguson urged healthcare services companies to review their price disclosure practices and swiftly make any required corrections, per the release.

“One of the Trump FTC’s enforcement priorities is ensuring that pricing is transparent and truthful,” Ferguson said in the letter template. “The FTC has prioritized promoting price transparency across multiple markets, including rental housing, ticketing and hotels, grocery delivery services, and auto sales and leasing.”

PYMNTS reported in August that the FTC warned that companies using consumers’ personal data to set prices could be violating the law. The agency said in an enforcement bulletin that retailers who imply that a price is static when it actually varies according to the shopper are at risk of misleading their consumers.

In July, the FTC filed a legal complaint against Hims & Hers, accusing the telehealth company of charging many customers for prescription treatments before they had an opportunity to consult with a provider, enrolling them in recurring plans and making those subscriptions difficult to cancel.

In June, the FTC filed a complaint against Genesis Tech, a network of apps, accusing it of hooking consumers with a free or low-cost offer, building trust through quizzes and personalized results, hiding the auto-renewal terms, charging unexpected recurring fees and making canceling difficult.