The Sunshine State’s hospital shock

As Floridians stare down their hospital bills, the numbers are as shocking as a lightning strike in a Summer thunderstorm and, too often, just as unexpected. Florida’s hospitals have perfected the art of hiding charges, leaving patients blindsided with crippling debt after visits that should be about healing, not financial ruin.

That’s why recent actions by Florida’s Attorney General and the Trump administration’s push for rigorous price transparency are not just welcome, they are essential.

Across the Sunshine State, the health care system is failing one of its most basic obligations: telling patients what care actually costs before it’s delivered. A report found that only 29% of Florida hospitals were in compliance with federal price transparency requirements, and a meager 3% provided sufficient pricing data to consumers. That means only 3 out of every 100 hospitals give patients the basic numbers they need to understand or plan for the cost of care.

What is the real impact? Patients arrive for necessary care, whether it be childbirth, surgeries, or emergency treatments, and are handed contracts to sign with no idea what they’ll be charged. When that care ends, they get bills that can dwarf their incomes. Hidden charges for essential services have become commonplace, and prices can vary widely even within the same hospital system when they are finally posted at all.

Enter Attorney General James Uthmeier, who has rightly opened an investigation and issued subpoenas to multiple hospital systems over price transparency and billing practices that may violate both state and federal law.

The Attorney General’s Office is pushing back against what patient advocates describe as “predatory practices” by hospitals that “forced patients to sign a blank check before they can get care.”

This investigation aligns squarely with a broader, long-overdue effort led by the Trump Administration to pull back the curtain on health care pricing. In 2025, President Donald Trump signed a sweeping Executive Order titled, “Making America Healthy Again by Empowering Patients with Clear, Accurate and Actionable Healthcare Pricing Information,” stressing that hospitals must provide “actual prices, not estimates.”

This builds on earlier actions and reinforces the principle that patients, like consumers in any other market, deserve clear pricing before they buy a product or service.

Alongside executive actions, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has strengthened its enforcement of hospital price transparency requirements. New CMS policies call for hospitals to affirm the “accuracy and completeness” of their published pricing data and empower the agency to enforce compliance more effectively, including through civil monetary penalties.

This is exactly the kind of accountability Floridians deserve. In a true market economy, people shop around, compare prices and make informed choices. Health care has stubbornly resisted that reality – until now. Under enhanced CMS enforcement, hospitals that fail to disclose clear, complete pricing can be held to account, empowering patients and driving competition that ultimately lowers costs.

But price transparency is only one piece of the solution. The newly introduced Trump Great Healthcare Plan goes further by tackling the root causes of high costs and delivering tangible relief to patients and families. The plan aims to slash prescription drug prices, reduce insurance premiums, and deliver money directly back into individuals’ pockets.

Under the plan, the federal government would require health care providers and insurers to prominently display their prices, strengthen competition, and shift subsidy flows so that patients, not middlemen, benefit.

This is the consumer-centric reform that market-minded conservatives have long championed: putting patients back in control of their health care decisions and their dollars.

Florida’s current situation demonstrates why such reforms are not theoretical but practical. When most hospitals cannot or will not post usable prices, Floridians are left vulnerable to surprise bills and unpredictable costs that strain families and small businesses alike. Transparency isn’t just about information; it’s about fairness and accountability.

Kudos to Uthmeier for taking on the hospital behemoths that have profited for too long from hidden pricing. Floridians deserve more clarity from their hospitals, not to be left with surprise bills and high costs of care. The Trump administration’s push for real enforcement of transparency rules is only reinforcing this movement.

Florida’s Legislature should embrace a broader vision of hospital accountability, transparency and competition – one that delivers direct, meaningful health care affordability for all Americans.

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Jim Kallinger represented District 35 in the Florida House of Representatives from 2002 to 2004. He later served as president of the National Association of former State Legislators and is now Chair of the Small Business and Consumers Alliance.