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ASCA Continues Price Transparency Advocacy for ASCs

Staff joins Senate roundtable on Patients Deserve Price Tags Act

BY STEPHEN ABRESCH | MARCH 17, 2026

ASCA keeps monitoring and opposing price transparency requirements that unfairly burden ASCs.

In its latest attempt to that end, last week, ASCA Director of Government Affairs Stephen Abresch and Manager of Legislative & Political Affairs David Opong-Wadee joined a roundtable discussion with staff from the Senate Health, Education, Labor & Pensions (HELP) Committee and the offices of Senators Roger Marshall (R-KS) and John Hickenlooper (D-CO) to discuss the Patients Deserve Price Tags Act (S. 2355).

The legislation, introduced by the two senators in 2025, would impose hospital-style price transparency requirements on ASCs by requiring disclosure of information like gross charges, payer-specific negotiated charges, and de-identified maximum and minimum charges in different formats for all items and services provided by an ASC.

During the discussion, Abresch and Opong-Wadee emphasized that ASCA supports patient-centered price transparency efforts, which provide patients with a clear understanding of their out-of-pocket costs. They also highlighted that ASCs already provide patients with information about the cash pay price of any procedure, the one price that ASCs directly control. They noted that, as written, the legislation fails to provide patients with such an understanding: the required disclosures would tell patients nothing about their out-of-pocket costs, while providing insurance carriers with a treasure trove of information that could be used in contract negotiations with ASCs.

ASCA staff also raised the issue of the advanced explanation of benefits (AEOB), an as-yet unimplemented insurer-side price transparency requirement included in the No Surprises Act. The AEOB is designed for the express purpose of providing covered individuals with accurate information about their out-of-pocket costs by requiring insurers to create a personalized explanation of benefits that details the facility’s expected charges, the insurer’s expected payment and the amount the individual is expected to pay. Attempts to impose additional price transparency requirements on ASCs would simply burden facilities while doing nothing to address the lack of accurate information about out-of-pocket costs caused by the lack of AEOBs.

ASCA regularly opposes price transparency proposals that impose burdens on ASCs while failing to deliver useful information to patients. In recent history, ASCA submitted comments during the 118th Congress opposing the Lower Costs, More Transparency Act (HR 5378), which is similar to the Patients Deserve Price Tags Act. At the start of the 119th Congress in 2025, ASCA partnered with the American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ASGE) to submit a coalition letter, signed by 11 organizations, to Bill Cassidy (R-LA), chairman of the Senate HELP Committee, and Bernie Sanders (I-VT), ranking member, expressing concerns about proposed price transparency legislation and its potential negative impact on ASCs.

ASCA’s invitation to participate in the roundtable discussion is evidence of its growing visibility with committee and congressional office staff. Through events like ASCA-organized facility tours, the congressional fly-ins and the day-to-day advocacy efforts of ASCA staff on Capitol Hill, members of Congress are more knowledgeable about ASCs and increasingly likely to solicit ASCA’s opinion on proposed legislation.

To learn more about these efforts, write Stephen Abresch at sabresch@ascassociation.org or David Opong-Wadee at dopongwadee@ascassociation.org.