Employers are leading the call for hospital accountability
LEARN MOREShawn Gremminger
President and CEO, National Alliance of Healthcare Purchaser Coalitions
The Drivers of Rising Hospital Prices
Rising healthcare costs are driving up premiums nationwide, deepening the affordability crisis for working families and forcing employers to make difficult choices between increasing wages and preserving health coverage for their workers.
Three interrelated policy problems must be addressed to reduce the burden of healthcare costs on working families.
Lack of Transparency
Without transparency, employers have limited ability to identify true costs, negotiate lower prices, and deliver better value for their employees.
Anticompetitive Consolidation Practices
Consolidation gives dominant health systems greater power to raise prices, limit choice, and steer care to higher-cost settings.
Public Subsidies Lacking Oversight
Hospitals receive substantial public benefits, but weak accountability often means those supports do not translate into lower costs for patients and purchasers.
Lowering Costs through Accountability and Transparency
Employers are doing their part to control healthcare costs through responsible purchasing strategies, negotiating with providers and investing in prevention and value-based care.
But employers cannot fix a broken healthcare market on their own. Policymakers must act. State and federal regulators can help by strengthening and enforcing healthcare price transparency requirements, so employers and patients can see the true cost of care and negotiate better deals. Further, employers need common-sense reforms that promote competition, curb anti-competitive hospital practices, and hold providers accountable for the prices they charge.
Without meaningful policy action, employers will continue to face rising healthcare costs that make it harder to provide affordable coverage for their employees and families.
Limit arbitrary and inflationary mark-ups:
“same service, same price”
Patients and employers should not pay more for the same service based solely on where it is delivered. Site-neutral payments and eliminating facility fees would reduce unnecessary costs and better align prices with clinical value.
Promote competition and curb anticompetitive conduct
Banning hospitals’ anticompetitive contracting practices, reforming certificate-of-need laws and conducting meaningful oversight of mergers would check the pricing power of the largest systems and level the playing field for employers.
Ensure working families benefit from discounts and tax breaks
Better oversight of the government-mandated drug discounts and tax breaks that hospitals receive can help ensure they translate into meaningful cost savings for working families and benefits for communities.