A 3-Part Strategy for Better Health Insurance

Healthcare costs, complexities, and corporate abuses make paying for and navigating the healthcare system excessively burdensome.

The Issue

Healthcare costs are ranked as a top financial stressor by Americans, above utilities, housing, and groceries. Out-of-pocket costs, as well as complex administrative burdens, have contributed to an increasingly unaffordable and inaccessible healthcare system.

Key Findings

Researchers from the Georgetown Center for Health Insurance Reforms outline a three-part roadmap to lower costs and administrative complexity for patients, and address the underlying drivers of growing healthcare costs in America.

1. Reducing Healthcare Costs: Patients need relief from out-of-pocket spending through actions that would cap out-of-pocket costs, limit hospital price inflation, improve the affordability of high-value services and prescription drugs, and end abusive practices.
2. Reducing Unnecessary Complexity: Paperwork burdens and fragmented standards make navigating the current system difficult for everyone. By advancing strategies that reduce red tape and raise benefit standards, in addition to improving transparency and consumer support, patients can more easily navigate their healthcare.
3. Protecting Patients from Corporate Abuses: People’s health needs to be put over profits. By implementing policy actions that reform the No Surprises Act, close patient protection gaps, curtail financialization and private equity abuses, as well as reduce medical debt through hospital fair billing certification, patients will be protected from abusive practices.

Conclusion

161 million Americans are struggling with costs, administrative barriers, and abusive corporate practices. The strategies outlined in this brief provide a pathway toward a healthcare system that improves the value of health insurance for everyone.

About the Author/Grantee

The Center on Health Insurance Reforms operates within Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. CHIR’s team is composed of leading health policy researchers with deep and nationally recognized expertise in health insurance laws, regulation, policies and market practices. The Georgetown Center on Health Insurance Reform’s mission is to advance evidence-based policy solutions that improve the U.S. health system so everyone can get the coverage and care they need at a price they can afford.