WASHINGTON, DC (March 6, 2019): The Council for Affordable Health Coverage (CAHC) – a coalition of employers, insurers, life science companies, PBMs, brokers, agents, patient groups, and physician organizations – provided testimony today from Vice President of State Affairs J.P. Wieske at a House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee hearing entitled, “Strengthening Our Health Care System: Legislation to Lower Consumer Costs and Expand Access.”
Wieske, the former Deputy Insurance Commissioner for the state of Wisconsin, emphasized the need for bipartisan solutions that secure involvement from states and private sector innovators in order to improve healthcare affordability and access.
Wieske released the following statement:
“It was a privilege to discuss CAHC’s bipartisan work to promote lower health costs for all Americans. Today, I shared specifically about my work in Wisconsin, where we enacted a state-based reinsurance program that lowered Wisconsinites’ premiums by 11 percent as compared to without our reforms in place. CAHC wants other states to experience that success and more, but we must allow greater space for state-led innovative solutions to occur.”
“We recommend that the committee seek out commonsense solutions that enhance states’ 1332 flexibility, expand enrollment channels by allowing private exchanges and web-broker entities to compete, and ultimately move beyond a singular focus on the individual market to address the broader and urgent challenge of bending the overall health cost curve.”
Background:
CAHC discussed these and other market-driven solutions to lower health costs in a recent response to a request for information from Senate HELP Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-TN).