In a report released last week, the Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System describes a set of three healthcare policies that could slow health spending by $2 trillion over 10 years by focusing on the way public and private purchasers pay for healthcare, enhancing consumers' choices of higher-value care and streamlining administrative procedures.
According to Stuart Guterman, vice president and executive director of the Commission on a High Performance Health System, the commission estimates that if their proposed policies were to be implemented soon with public and private payers on board, over a 10-year period federal spending could be reduced by $1.04 trillion, state and local government spending could be reduced by $242 billion and employer spending could be reduced by $189 billion. Guterman added that families would also see significant savings - $537 billion over a decade - as a result of lower future health insurance premiums and out-of-pocket costs.
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"The main point of the report is that the commission is recognizing that health spending is putting more and more pressure on not only the federal government, but state and local businesses and families," said Guterman. "We're concerned that a lot of policies being discussed are ones that involve reducing payments for services or reducing benefits for public programs or reducing eligibility for programs. They don't address the underlying problems that are driving up healthcare spending."
Guterman added that as healthcare premiums continue to rise, benefits are thinning out and many workers are experiencing very slow wage growth, making it difficult for many Americans to be able to afford high-quality care.
According to the report, the commission's first recommended policy involves creating incentives for providers to coordinate care, lower costs and improve outcomes. Guterman said this can be achieved by revising Medicare physician fees and methods of updating payments so that we pay for value, strengthening primary care and support care teams for high-cost patients, bundling hospital payments to focus on total costs and patient outcomes, and adopting payment reforms across markets.
The second recommended policy involves providing better information for consumers to make high-value healthcare decisions and providing direct encouragement for patients to choose providers for higher-value care, said Guterman.
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"This improves consumers' use of healthcare instead of restricting it; people can get the care they need and are plugged in with the right providers instead of a high volume of services," he said. "Also, revamping the Medicare program to modernize it - make it more comprehensive between hospital services, physician and outpatient services, and drug coverage by having it all in one program so care is more easily monitored and covered across all settings."
The third policy calls for system-wide action to improve how healthcare markets function by reducing administrative costs, reforming malpractice policy, and setting targets for total spending growth nationally, according to the report.
"We need to simplify and streamline administrative processes, like making recording processes and interactions between payers and providers more comprehensive," said Guterman. "The commission strongly recommends we establish national targets for healthcare spending so we don't spend over our total national growth over the next 10 years."
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