A Pro-Consumer Policy Agenda to Achieve Meaningful Health System Transformation

Families USA and four of our consumer advocacy partners — American Heart Association, National Consumers League, National Partnerships for Women and Families, and Third Way — are proud to introduce A Pro-Consumer Policy Agenda to Achieve Meaningful Health System Transformation. Our collective organizations have come together to put a stake in the ground about what it means to center the needs and interests of consumers and patients in efforts to make meaningful progress toward reforming U.S. health care payment and delivery.

This agenda outlines 6 policy priorities necessary to shift America’s health care payment and delivery system away from the inefficiencies of fee-for-service and toward population-based economics that truly meet the health needs of people in the U.S.

The following is a blueprint to advance pro-consumer policies that shift U.S. health care payment and delivery away from the inefficiencies and fragmentation of fee-for-service (FFS) economics toward the adoption of population-based economics that hold the health care system accountable for improving health and delivering affordable, high-quality, and equitable health care.

To address the U.S. health care affordability and quality crisis, and meaningfully transform health care payment and delivery to drive improvements in health equity and health outcomes, it is essential to reorient economic incentives to hold the health care system accountable for the health and financial security of our nation’s families. We believe the following policy principles represent important pro-consumer reforms that tackle many of the underlying incentives in the health care system to help make progress towards this goal. To that end, we urge policymakers to consider reforms that adhere to the following policy principles to begin to drive meaningful value into U.S. health care payment and delivery.