Report includes CAHC-backed language on HSA and HRA Expansions, Facilitating Improved Price Transparency
WASHINGTON, DC (December 3, 2018): The Council for Affordable Health Coverage (CAHC) – a coalition of employers, insurers, life science companies, PBMs, brokers, agents, patient groups, and physician organizations – responded today to the Trump administration’s release of a report entitled, “Reforming America’s Healthcare System Through Choice and Competition.”
The report includes more than 50 recommendations that Congress, the administration, and states can take to improve healthcare choice and competition. This includes several recommendations that build upon CAHC’s longtime work promoting Health Savings Account (HSA) and Health Reimbursement Arrangement (HRA) flexibility and championing solutions to improve healthcare cost transparency.
CAHC President Joel White released the following statement:
“Americans lack free markets in healthcare. Patients are saddled with highly concentrated and uncompetitive markets, particularly for health services. Indeed, one could drive from Washington D.C. to San Fransisco and from Seattle to Miami without ever passing through a competitive health market – and the problem is getting worse, not better. With this report, the administration is taking an honest look at these festering problems and offering worthy solutions for reform,” said CAHC President Joel White. “We commend the administration’s call for Congress to expand HSAs – market-based savings tools used by more than 20 million Americans to manage health costs – by widening the scope of health plans deemed HSA-eligible, raising contribution limits, and allowing consumers to use their HSAs toward a broader range of expenses, including non-group premiums. We vigorously supported Congressional efforts to expand HSAs earlier this year, and are hopeful that this report can be a catalyst for bipartisan action to finish the job in 2019. We also thank the administration for pledging in this report to continue working to improve HRA usability, and hope to see those efforts buoyed by swift finalization of the recent CAHC-supported HRA proposed rule.”
White continued, “CAHC supports this report’s recommendations for improving health care cost transparency, and urges the administration and Congress to build upon these recommendations with further actions – like those delineated in our letter to a bipartisan coalition of Senators earlier this year – to make price and quality information easily available to consumers in a standardized format upfront and online.”
White concluded, “Expanding healthcare choice and competition is at the heart of CAHC’s mission and we are heartened to see the administration take that charge seriously with this report. We look forward to conducting a more thorough review of these findings and working with policymakers to enact reforms that empower consumers, address runaway health services spending, and put market forces to work improving healthcare quality.”