WASHINGTON, May 18 (TNSres) — America’s Health Insurance Plans issued the next news release on May 17, 2022:
AHIP launched Healthier People through Healthier Markets, a latest policy roadmap and set of solutions to enhance health care affordability and access for each American. The trouble is concentrated on boosting competition in health care markets and reining in harmful practices that hurt American families. With the launch of this policy roadmap, AHIP sent letters to President Biden and the leadership of Congress that lay out an in depth set of legislative and regulatory enforcement actions to extend competition in health care, drive down costs, and improve health care access for patients.
AHIP’s solutions are designed to enhance competition in 10 key areas of our health care system to extend affordability and access for each American. They’re based on 4 straightforward commitments to patients, consumers, and businesses, including:
* Improving patient selection.
* Protecting patients, consumers, and businesses from overpaying for care.
* Improving transparency.
* Stopping drug pricing and patent games by Big Pharma.
“When robust competition exists in our health care system, negotiations between private sector entities work to encourage innovation, quality improvements and more affordability. But increasingly limited competition in certain health care markets is commonly resulting in unsustainable price increases and fewer selections for patients and consumers,” said Matt Eyles, AHIP President and CEO. “The establishment is unaffordable for American families and businesses, and that’s the reason we’re affirming meaningful solutions that may promote greater competition and access while improving affordability. President Biden and leaders in Congress have made fighting consolidation a priority across industries, and our Healthier People through Healthier Markets roadmap offers specific, concrete actions that may and needs to be taken at each the federal and state levels to scale back prices and costs by improving competition through smart health policy and increase affordability and access.”
View the AHIP letters and the complete Healthier People through Healthier Markets agenda (https://www.ahip.org/healthier-people-healthier-markets).
The ten key areas where federal and state policymakers can take motion to enhance health care competition and promote greater access and affordability are geared toward achieving those core commitments. They include:
1. Support consumer-centric expansion of home-based advanced care through value-based care and payment models – another that may offer patients higher, more convenient, and cheaper care outside of the hospital.
2. Bring much-needed transparency to personal equity firms’ monopoly power in air ambulance, emergency, and certain specialty services that always provide services on a fee-for-service basis.
3. Advance site-neutral payments to defend consumers against having to pay more for a similar services depending on the positioning of care.
4. Support patients’ selection of telehealth, when clinically appropriate, as a more cost effective and more convenient approach to care, by removing government impediments, modernizing network adequacy regulations, and guarding against regulatory structures that reduce telehealth’s competitive advantages.
5. Address the harms brought on by the dialysis duopoly by stopping its further expansion, removing barriers to care alternatives which can be higher for patients, and curbing using charitable structures that redirect resources to fortify the duopoly.
6. Stop consolidated health systems from using their monopoly position to stifle negotiation and innovation through using all-or-nothing, anti-tiering, and other take-it-or-leave-it contract terms.
7. Speed up the supply of prescription drug biosimilars to be sure that the pace of access matches the pace of innovation.
8. Stop drug manufacturers from engaging in patent games that distort the system to keep up monopoly profits.
9. Reform the system for provider-acquired drugs, which has resulted in ever-escalating prices for such drugs.
10. Address the ways by which drug manufacturers have abused charitable structures to guard their monopolies, moderately than help patients.
As a part of today’s announcement, medical health insurance providers committed to working with federal and state officials and other health care leaders to perform these goals. By prioritizing these reforms and taking concrete actions, AHIP believes that patients can have more selections, employer coverage shall be cheaper with higher advantages, and treatment programs shall be more accessible and reasonably priced for patients.
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REPORT: https://www.ahip.org/documents/202205-AHIP_HPHM-WhitePaper-v03.pdf
