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Consumers for Fair Hospital Pricing

The Consumers for Fair Hospital Pricing is a coalition of leading organizations representing families, individuals, and health care consumers across the United States taking on the harmful pricing practices and anti-competitive behavior of hospitals and large hospital corporations.

Our work is to ensure that every person and family has access to high-quality health care that prevents illness, allows them to see a doctor when needed, and helps to keep their families healthy at a price they can afford. This goal requires us to realign the business interests of the hospital sector to put people at the center.

We are focused around the following three goals that will make hospital care higher quality and more affordable:

  1. End price gouging by hospitals and large hospital systems. We will advance policy solutions that stop big hospital systems from setting unfair and inflated health care prices and engaging in dishonest billing practices.
  2. Fix market failures including efforts to promote competition within health care markets. We will advance policy solutions that prevent further consolidation within and across US health care markets and prohibit hospitals and big hospital systems from using their monopoly power to unfairly increase health care prices.
  3. Increase and strengthen price and quality data transparency. We will advance policies that make health care prices and data about the quality of care openly available to the public and policymakers, helping to expose hospital prices so that policymakers, researchers, and consumers can see how irrational these prices have become and take more targeted action.

The coalition’s formal members currently include Families USA, Colorado Consumer Health Initiative, Consumers for Quality Care, Health Action California, Pennsylvania Health Access Network, Public Citizen, and U.S. PIRG.

To find out more about our work, or to get involved, please email Mike Persley, Strategic Partnerships Campaign Manager, at mpersley@familiesusa.org.

Coalition Background:

Recent Activity:

  • The coalition released its legislative priorities, calling on Congress to pass pro-consumer policies that make hospital care more affordable, higher quality, more transparent, and more consumer-friendly for our nation’s families.
  • Consumers for Fair Hospital Pricing launched on September 26, 2023, with a public event that included stories from affected consumers, remarks by members of Congress, and a call to action to join us in taking on high hospital prices. Thirty-eight national and state organizations endorsed our coalition’s principles at the time of the launch.

About our Members:

 

The Pennsylvania Health Access Network (PHAN) is the commonwealth’s only statewide consumer-driven organization working to expand and protect access to high-quality, equitable, and affordable healthcare for all Pennsylvanians. Since 2007, PHAN has brought together health care patients and over 700 community organizations across the state to advocate for lower costs, improved access and affordability, better coverage, and stronger patient protections. To achieve this, PHAN blends coalition-building and policy advocacy with our unique model of community health organizing that focuses on supporting and empowering patients to get the treatment they need and become advocates for better healthcare in their local communities and statewide. PHAN has connected 38,000 individuals and families to coverage and works with 10,000 people every year to resolve issues and barriers to care. By working with a broad range of healthcare consumers throughout the state, PHAN is able to identify common concerns, barriers, and needs that inform our policy agenda.

 
 

Health Access California is the statewide health care consumer advocacy coalition, working for nearly 40 years for the goal of quality, affordable, equitable health care for all Californians. Health Access seeks to empower individuals and organizations to advocate for state and federal actions that secure and expand coverage and care, promote public health, and protect patients from industry practices that unfairly deny care or overcharge for it. Focusing on costs, quality, equity and access, we develop and advance policies to ensure patients get the care they need when and how they need it, while reducing discrimination and disparities.

 
 

Consumers for Quality Care (CQC) is a coalition of advocates and former policymakers working to provide a voice for patients in the health care debate as they demand better care. CQC is led by a board of directors that includes the Honorable Donna Christensen, physician and former Member of Congress; Jim Manley, former senior advisor to Senators Edward Kennedy and Harry Reid; Jason Resendez, health care advocate; and Mary Smith former CEO of the Indian Health Services during the Obama Administration.

 
 

The Colorado Consumer Health Initiative (CCHI) is a nonprofit, consumer-oriented, membership-based health advocacy organization that serves Coloradans whose access to health care and financial security are compromised by structural barriers, affordability, poor benefits, or unfair business practices of the health care industry.

 
 

Public Citizen is a national non-profit organization with more than 500,000 members and supporters across the country. We represent the public interest through legislative and administrative advocacy, litigation, research, and public education on a broad range of issues including ensuring access to health care. Public Citizen has supported eliminating corporate greed in health care and the creation of a single-payer health care system since our founding in 1971.

 
 

PIRG is a federation of independent, state-based, citizen-funded Public Interest Research Groups. PIRG works to find common ground around common sense solutions. We speak out for the public and stand up to special interests on problems that affect the public’s health, safety and wellbeing.

 
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