The Patients Deserve Price Tags Act would significantly impact independent labs by bringing them under the same strict federal price transparency mandates that currently apply only to hospitals. Versions of the bill were introduced late last year in the Senate (S. 2355) and House (H.R. 5582). The bill would require independent labs to make monthly public disclosures of their negotiated reimbursement rates across their entire test menu. “The reporting requirements in the current draft are staggering,” stated the American Clinical Laboratory Association (ACLA) in a July 2 letter to Senate leaders.
New Bill Would Expand Price Transparency (cont’d from page 1) The champions behind the bipartisan Patients Deserve Price Tags Act are U.S. Senators Roger Marshall (R-KS) and John Hickenlooper (D-CO). So far, the proposed legislation has the support of a total of 24 Senators and 12 members of the House.
“Customers don’t walk into a restaurant only to find out how much the food costs when they get the bill. Patients should know the price of the service they need before they make any decisions,” according to Senator Marshall.
“We deserve to know exactly what we are paying for whether it’s a lab test, a colonoscopy, or an
MRI,” stated Senator Hickenlooper.
The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) held a full committee hearing on the bill on March 19, 2026. In addition, the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee held a hearing on June 10, 2026.
Effective July 1, 2027, the bill would require the following disclosures from all CLIA-certified clinical and anatomic pathology labs:
- Public Rate Sheets: Labs must make publicly available, and update monthly, all negotiated rates with health insurance plans for all lab tests and ancillary services they offer.
- Cash Discounts: Labs must explicitly disclose their standard discounted cash prices for patients paying out-of-pocket.
- Standardized Descriptions: Lab tests must be listed with plain-language descriptions and standard billing codes so consumers can easily compare prices across different facilities.
Furthermore, labs that fail to post their rates or try to hide fees will face heavy financial penalties and enforcement actions under the proposed legislation. Labs that fail to comply are subject to a civil monetary penalty (CMP) of up to $300 per day. And the bill gives the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (currently Robert F. Kennedy Jr.) the authority to increase the penalty starting in 2028.
In the letter to Senate leaders, ACLA President Susan Van Meter noted that there are more than 2,100 test codes on the Medicare Clinical Laboratory Fee Schedule alone and that some ACLA member labs have contracts with up to 900 health plans. Thus, the bill would require some large labs to review and post nearly two million rates each month (i.e., 2,100 codes x 900 plans). The reporting costs to meet this obligation would be significant and divert resources away from patient care, according to Van Meter.
“A far more reasonable approach—and one that would yield information that is truly useful to patients—would be to require clinical labs to post cash prices for those testing services on the CMS list of shoppable services,” according to Van Meter. There are currently 14 routine clinical lab tests specified in the CMS core list of 70 mandatory shoppable services.
Hospital Price Transparency
The Patients Deserve Price Tags Act also seeks to expand existing transparency requirements for hospitals. For example, the bill requires hospitals to update and post publicly their rates each month, rather than the current requirement of once a year. In addition, the bill dramatically increases penalties and mandates CMPs for every violation, removing CMS discretion. Under the
bill, for example, hospitals with more than 500 beds, would be subject to a $25 per bed per day fine (i.e., $12,500+ per day) for noncompliance.