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Dear Editor:
It is no surprise that during an election year, all politicians are speaking about the economy. But what they should be talking about impacts rising healthcare costs on family and business budgets, along with who is responsible.
Year after year, lawmakers in Indianapolis pay lip service to tackling these costs with “market-based solutions,” but each session seems to be just more of the same. Misguided policy efforts continue to take us in the worse direction, like we saw this year. Many proposals were little more than price-controls measures that shield hospitals from consequences for their actions, allowing them to continue exploiting their market dominance to drive prices higher for families and employers.
The “Affordable Care Act” has done everything but make healthcare more affordable. Since its passage more than a decade ago, it has only gotten harder to access affordable, quality healthcare. Unfortunately, lawmakers in Indianapolis don’t seem to be helping much as they continue advancing policies that do not to address hospitals’ role in driving up healthcare costs. As a result, Hoosiers continue to pay some of the highest healthcare costs in the nation while hospitals collect some of the highest profits.
There are actual market-based solutions that would help drive down those costs. Lawmakers should find ways to increase hospital competition so that patients have the ability to make choices that work for their health needs – and their budgets.
One area ripe for reform involves “Any Willing Provider” (AWP) laws, which mandate that health plans accept any legally licensed medical provider into their network, regardless of performance, cost, or patient safety record. While these laws are often pitched as increasing consumer choice, the data shows AWP laws simply act as anti-competitive regulations that limit health plans’ ability to drive value by designing networks based on quality outcomes and cost effectiveness, and instead force them to accept any provider regardless of quality or cost.
According to independent economic studies, AWP laws increase hospital spending by 4.7 percent, increase physician spending by 6 percent, and increase drug spending by 5.8 percent.
Another study found that states with “strong” AWP laws had an average increase in per capita health costs of 1.8 percent when compared to states without this anti-competitive law.
Hoosier families are bearing the brunt of these outdated laws when they pay out-of-pocket expenses before hitting their deductibles. On top of this, 80 percent of large employers who self-fund their own health plans are being forced to cover higher cost plans with lower quality of care.
Even though families and employers are paying higher healthcare costs than every state that borders Indiana, we are still suffering potential safety risks, since networks are barred from removing negligent or low-quality providers. As a result, insurers currently lack the tools to incentivize patients to choose higher value, in-network options that cost less.
Indiana has a deeply concerning hospital safety record, which has clearly not been addressed by guaranteeing hospital profits. Half of our hospitals received a “C” grade or lower in national rankings on preventing medical errors and infections.
The last thing Hoosiers need are new laws that eliminate the market-based tools focused on driving down healthcare costs. We need our lawmakers to start reforming some of the existing laws that have made Indiana one of the highest cost states for healthcare in the nation. Repealing AWP laws would be a simple fix that incentives better care and lower costs.
I hope that next session our state legislature will advance policy solutions aimed at repealing and reforming anti-competitive laws like this, instead of adding additional regulations that do nothing to increase value or reduce costs.
David Goldberg
Carmel