Senate committee advances amended health omnibus bill focused on price transparency, surprise billing and site-of-service rules

The Health and Provider Services Committee advanced an amended version of House Bill 1003 on a unanimous voice and roll-call vote, recommitting the measure to the Appropriations Committee.

The amendment, presented by Senator Michael Johnson, trims several topics from the original bill and adds clearer definitions for hospital "site of service," a new set of price-transparency requirements for diagnostic labs and imaging, and retains prior-authorization and "right to try" provisions. "We defined it as a discounted cash price that we're asking the labs in the diagnostic imaging to list so that there's a unique, and uniform price for every service," Johnson said during committee discussion.

Why it matters: Committee members said the bill aims to operationalize prior work (House Bill 1004 of 2023 is referenced in committee discussion) and to push price transparency and clearer site-of-service rules into practice before taking further steps. Sponsors said the changes are intended to let patients see what they may be expected to pay, reduce surprise bills, and better define where hospital services occur.

Key provisions and discussion

- Site-of-service: The amendment removes some payer-specific language (state employee plan, FSSA, HMOs, private plans) and asks hospitals to provide lists of facility locations and place-of-service codes to clarify what facilities are covered by hospital networks.

- Price transparency: Committee discussion narrowed the transparency ask to a single "discounted cash price" for listed diagnostic and imaging services; the amendment retains an approach that would request a top-100 ambulatory surgery center CPT code list for public reporting to keep the reporting burden manageable.

- 340B pharmacy program: The amendment removes the 340B transparency language from HB1003, noting Senate Bill 118 in the other chamber addresses that subject.

- Prior authorization and "right to try": Those provisions remain in the bill; leaders said prior-authorization reform (Senate Bill 480) is pending in the legislature and the HB1003 language may be adjusted later.

- Good-faith estimates and timing: The amended language removes a requirement for immediate or at-discharge estimates and instead allows facilities a short number of business days to furnish a reasonable estimate so the estimate is useful rather than a preprinted piece of paper.

- Contracting, data ownership and audit rights: The bill still includes discussion of contractual terms and data ownership; sponsors said anti-competitive contracting language was flagged as vague and will be revisited in later work.

Vote and next steps

The committee took amendments (amendments 15 and 17 were discussed and accepted) and passed the amended bill on a recorded vote reported in committee as 12–0, with the bill to be recommitted to Appropriations for fiscal review.

What’s next: Because the committee removed certain topics and flagged others for further work, sponsors said additional adjustments on contracting and audit rights are likely. The measure will be reviewed by Appropriations and may be further amended before floor consideration.

Speakers quoted or recorded during the item were Senator Michael Johnson (amendment lead) and Chairman Charbonneau; the committee also acknowledged technical and stakeholder help from legislative services and from medical experts who worked on good-faith-estimate language.