Consumers for Fair Hospital Pricing

The Consumers for Fair Hospital Pricing is a coalition of leading organizations representing families, individuals, and health care consumers across the United States taking on the harmful pricing practices and anti-competitive behavior of hospitals and large hospital corporations.

Our work is to ensure that every person and family has access to high-quality health care that prevents illness, allows them to see a doctor when needed, and helps to keep their families healthy at a price they can afford. This goal requires us to realign the business interests of the hospital sector to put people at the center.

We are focused around the following three goals that will make hospital care higher quality and more affordable:

1. End price gouging by hospitals and large hospital systems. We will advance policy solutions that stop big hospital systems from setting unfair and inflated health care prices and engaging in dishonest billing practices.
2. Fix market failures including efforts to promote competition within health care markets. We will advance policy solutions that prevent further consolidation within and across US health care markets and prohibit hospitals and big hospital systems from using their monopoly power to unfairly increase health care prices.
3. Increase and strengthen price and quality data transparency. We will advance policies that make health care prices and data about the quality of care openly available to the public and policymakers, helping to expose hospital prices so that policymakers, researchers, and consumers can see how irrational these prices have become and take more targeted action.

The coalition’s formal members currently include Families USA, Colorado Consumer Health Initiative, Consumers for Quality Care, Health Action California, Pennsylvania Health Access Network, Public Citizen, and U.S. PIRG.

To find out more about our work, or to get involved, please email Mike Persley, Strategic Partnerships Campaign Manager, at mpersley@familiesusa.org.

Coalition Background:

• To learn more about what the Consumers for Fair Hospital Pricing Coalition is working toward, please see our Guiding Principles. You can endorse these principles as a show of support for our growing movement by filling out our endorsement form.
• Please read our press release announcing our coalition’s launch.
• Receive regular updates on the coalition’s work by signing up for our email list.

Recent Activity:

• Consumers for Fair Hospital Pricing launched on September 26, 2023, with a public event that included stories from affected consumers, remarks by members of Congress, and a call to action to join us in taking on high hospital prices. Thirty-eight national and state organizations endorsed our coalition’s principles at the time of the launch