Two U.S. senators are calling for a federal investigation into hospital billing practices, pointing to recent findings that uninsured patients are being hit with medical bills averaging five times what Medicare pays for the identical procedures.
U.S. Senators Ashley Moody and Dan Sullivan sent an official letter to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. on May 28, 2026. The lawmakers are asking HHS to dig into the root causes of severe medical debt and deliver concrete policy recommendations to Congress.
The push centers heavily on how hospitals price services for people without coverage. While many individuals in collections owe less than $300, a smaller group faces catastrophic balances. According to data cited by the senators, roughly 14 million Americans owe over $1,000 in medical debt, and three million owe more than $10,000. This latter group accounts for nearly 80 percent of all aggregate medical debt across the country.
A 2022 survey highlighted a sharp divide in who holds this debt: 70 percent of people with medical debts under $1,000 had no hospital bills, whereas more than 70 percent of those owing over $1,000 owed that money directly to hospitals.
“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,” Moody and Sullivan wrote in the joint letter.
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The senators noted that despite previous legislative efforts—specifically the No Surprises Act passed during the Trump administration to shield patients from unexpected out-of-network bills—medical costs remain a premier concern for households. The letter connected the ongoing strain to broader economic pressures, stating that “after four years of runaway inflation and increasing health costs under the Biden administration, instances of high medical debt continue to be a top concern for our constituents.”
A core issue raised in the inquiry is the hidden complexity of accessing lower medical rates. The letter notes that while hospitals do offer lower “cash rates” for certain services, patients can rarely access them without navigating a dense, confusing bureaucracy or utilizing specialized advocates that most everyday consumers do not know exist. Instead, the lawmakers allege that hospitals routinely send uninsured patients to collections using inflated list prices, which they argue penalizes the vulnerable and ignores the community benefit mandates that tax-exempt hospitals are legally required to uphold.
The request also urges HHS to look past superficial fixes. Moody and Sullivan referenced a major academic study involving over 83,000 individuals which found that simply buying up and forgiving old medical debt from collections did not actually improve the recipients’ overall financial health, credit access, or physical and mental well-being on average.
The investigation requested by the senators is expected to specifically look into the systemic issues within their home states of Florida and Alaska, as well as nationwide, to find out why the billing system leaves so many patients with unpayable bills.
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