Government says if you’re self-funded you have to do this in 2027 or face punishment if you don’t.
Plan sponsors have a fiduciary responsibility to read, understand and implement all 120 pages or face government punishment by faceless badge heavy bureaucrats if they don’t.
This is an amazing development as plan members have never been known to ask for prices before, during or after a health care encounter.
Plan members should be ecstatic. Now, for the first time ever, they can effectively “shop” for the best health care pricing knowing quoted prices are firm upfront because their plan sponsor says they are. Beats haggling.
Here’s an excerpt starting on page 3,866:
Federal Register/Vol. 91, No. 192/Tuesday, October 6, 2026/Rules and Regulations:
The machine-readable files described in paragraphs (b)(1) and (2) of this section must be publicly available and accessible to any person, automated script, or web crawler free of charge and without conditions, such as establishment of a user account, password, submission of personally identifiable information or other credentials, or blocking server configurations or firewalls to access the file.
The source page URL for the internet website that hosts the machine- readable files required under paragraphs (b)(1) and (2) of this section must be included as a link in the footer on the home page of the group health plan’s or health insurance issuer’s website, as well as any page of the website that features a footer, that is labeled ‘‘Price Transparency’’ or ‘‘Transparency in Coverage’’ and links directly to the publicly available web page that hosts the link to the machine-readable files.