Florida AG brings MAHA to life, issues subpoenas probing hospitals’ predatory pricing

Holding the frontlines of President Donald Trump’s policies, a red state’s attorney general subpoenaed hospitals as a means to advance the Make America Healthy Again agenda.

Following up on actions from his first administration, the president issued an executive order in February requiring transparency from hospitals on pricing. Friday, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier (R) announced he had opened an investigation into state hospitals to determine whether or not they violated predatory pricing laws and transparency rules.

“President Trump’s Make America Healthy Again agenda requires that hospitals provide patients with transparent pricing. My office is going to help the president deliver on his mandate,” asserted the attorney general in an X post accompanying a video. “That’s why I’ve issued subpoenas to multiple Florida-based hospitals to ensure they comply with Florida law and provide patients with open, transparent pricing for medical services. Patients are still consumers, and they deserve transparency.”

Uthmeier’s detailed his investigation was specifically “related to patient charges, disclosures, billing practices, price transparency, and surprise billing protections.”

President Trump’s Make America Healthy Again agenda requires that hospitals provide patients with transparent pricing. My office is going to help the president deliver on his mandate.

That’s why I’ve issued subpoenas to multiple Florida-based hospitals to ensure they comply… pic.twitter.com/5zlFit1pXw

— Attorney General James Uthmeier (@AGJamesUthmeier) May 30, 2025

Reacting to the investigation, PatientRightsAdvocate.org founder and CEO Cynthia Fisher expressed, “Hospitals have hidden their prices yet have forced patients to sign a blank check before they can get care.”

“As long as prices have been hidden, hospitals have been able to charge whatever they want. The Attorney General’s action seeks to protect patients through actual upfront prices. This investigation will protect Floridians from hospitals’ predatory practices, prevent overcharges, and make bills accountable,” she continued. “Ultimately, these consumer protections will help consumers to lower their costs.”

Our Founder and Chairman Cynthia Fisher’s response to the news of Florida @AGJamesUthmeier‘s decision to investigate the deceptive and predatory practices of Florida hospitals flouting state law and federal price transparency rules ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/CDGSTzW3Ik

— PatientRightsAdvocate.org (@PtRightsAdvoc) May 30, 2025

According to the president’s order, a 2023 economic analysis had estimated that transparency could amount to “$80 billion in healthcare savings for consumers, employers, and insurers” by this year, but federal efforts to advance the policies had stalled during the Biden administration.

As had been the case with issues like immigration enforcement and law and order, Florida had taken its own steps to advance pricing transparency. However, a November 2024 report from PRA found that only 29% of Florida hospitals were complying with rules and a meager 3% had made sufficient pricing information available to patients.

According to the report, “Zero hospitals reviewed owned by Ascension, AdventHealth, Kaiser Permanente, Bon Secours Mercy, and Mercy were found to be fully compliant.”

AdventHealth had previously come under fire in 2021 when CBS News reported that a Florida woman with health insurance was faced with a bill of over half a million dollars after her son had been born prematurely in November 2020 and treated in the neonatal intensive care unit. Inquiries into the situation, said to have been rooted in the mother’s employer changing health plans, led the provider to revise the bill to a total of $300 rather than the $46,000 per month payment plan she’d initially been offered.

Staff Writer

Native of Brooklyn, NY, Kevin Haggerty is a graduate of Hunter College where he studied Cultural Anthropology and Geography. An avid reader and truth seeker, he currently resides in Texas with his wife and their dog and, when he isn’t researching current events and their impacts, you’ll find him spending time with friends and family or working on his next novel.

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