Florida Senator Ashley Moody is turning up the heat on hospital billing, teaming with Alaska Republican Dan Sullivan to press the Department of Health and Human Services for a formal probe into how hospitals charge uninsured patients. In a joint appeal sent last Thursday, the pair asked HHS to explain why some facilities bill people without coverage far more than Medicare pays for the exact same procedures, and to return policy ideas to Congress. The move puts Florida, and Moody’s home turf, squarely in the middle of a national fight over hospital price transparency, collections, and what nonprofit health systems owe their communities.
The request arrived in a joint letter to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., detailed in a release from Senator Sullivan and the two page letter posted by Senator Moody. “We are writing to request you investigate and provide recommendations to Congress for addressing inappropriate health care billing practices that lead to high levels of medical debt,” they wrote.
The senators leaned on national data showing that most medical debt is clustered among a relatively small slice of patients. Roughly 14 million Americans owe more than $1,000 in medical bills, and about 3 million owe more than $10,000, together accounting for nearly 80 percent of all medical debt. Those figures come from the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker, which the lawmakers cited in their appeal.
Sticker Shock For The Uninsured
At the heart of the complaint is the yawning gap between hospital “sticker prices” and what public insurers actually pay, and who ends up stuck with that tab. An investigation by NBC News found that hospitals on average charge uninsured patients almost five times what Medicare pays for the same procedure, a finding the senators put front and center in their letter.
The lawmakers also point out that some hospitals quietly post lower “cash” prices yet keep them hard to find, while uninsured patients are still billed at inflated chargemaster rates and later chased by collectors. “Instead, hospitals routinely send vulnerable, uninsured patients to collections using inflated sticker prices,” the letter from Senator Moody states, a practice they want HHS to scrutinize in Florida, Alaska, and across the country.
What The Research Says
The senators are not sold on quick fixes. They cite research suggesting that simply wiping out old bills does not necessarily change the underlying dynamics. A large review by the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research found no evidence that buying and forgiving medical debts already in collections improved recipients’ finances, credit access, or physical and mental health on average. In their letter, the lawmakers use that result to argue for addressing root causes in hospital billing rather than relying on blanket debt buyouts. Stanford SIEPR summarized the study.
Why Florida And Tampa Should Care
For Florida patients and hospital systems, the requested inquiry could put a spotlight on billing practices at both giant health networks and smaller community hospitals. Data from KFF show that medical debt hits especially hard in Southern states, a pattern that leaves Floridians particularly exposed. In Tampa, uninsured residents carrying old hospital balances could eventually see new enforcement efforts or policy proposals that limit what hospitals are allowed to collect if HHS determines there are systemic problems.
What HHS Could Do Next
HHS already has some tools tied to hospital price transparency and the federal No Surprises Act, and Sullivan and Moody want Secretary Kennedy to return “concrete policy recommendations” to Congress if widespread abuses surface. The No Surprises Act overview from CMS explains the law and outlines consumer protections.
The same CMS resources also spell out how patients can dispute certain bills and request good faith estimates before care, tools that could matter more if HHS tightens the screws on hospitals’ use of list prices.
Hoodline will keep an eye on whether HHS formally opens the probe, and on how Florida hospitals or national hospital groups respond to the senators’ push. This story will be updated as agencies and providers go on the record.
