STATEMENT FROM Cynthia A. Fisher, a leading force behind the healthcare price transparency movement, founder and CEO of PatientRightsAdvocate.org, and a former life sciences entrepreneur.

Last night we heard our President amplify, and stand strongly behind what he has been fighting for and what 90 percent of voters surveyed want -- the ability to see and shop for healthcare prices before they get care, and get an outrageous bill they could not foresee weeks or months later.

President Trump knows that healthcare price transparency would introduce competition into our opaque healthcare system, dramatically lower the cost of care and coverage, end price-gouging and surprise bills, and put real money back into household budgets, and workers wages.

Healthcare price transparency is not a red or blue issue. It’s a widely bipartisan issue. The only ones against it are those who profit excessively from keeping consumers in the dark, and their special interest groups who pay our lawmakers millions of dollars to keep the system just the way it is.

But thanks to the Trump Administration’s strong leadership and growing awareness among American voters, I’m optimistic that pressure from the top-down and the bottom-up will expose the greed in the middle, and that ultimately Congress will vote to require hospitals and insurers to do the right thing, to disclose all their prices. Then America can begin to heal from much more than this pandemic.