Two former leaders of the Department of Health and Human Services under two presidents have proposed a solution to reducing healthcare costs that should appeal to both political parties in Congress.

Alex Azar, the HHS secretary under Donald Trump, and Kathleen Sebelius, who led the department under Barack Obama, urged Congress in an op-ed Thursday for STAT, a healthcare media outlet, to adopt policies advancing site-neutral payments to save patients and taxpayers money.

“When a free-standing physician office is purchased by a hospital system, what you pay for an X-ray, injection, or office visit goes up because that office now appears on paper as a ‘hospital site’ — even though nothing about the location or the services provided has changed in the real world,” they wrote. “That designation allows the new hospital system owners to bill higher rates for the services performed in the office, which in turn results in higher prices.

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