Competition and Transparency
Transparency is integral both to reduce health care costs and improve the quality of care. Specific changes in statute, and to the current regulatory regime, could significantly strengthen transparency in the health care system, thus giving rise to better care for patients, more competition, greater value, and improved quality and safety. Experience has shown that competition and information are critical to a functioning marketplace for any product, and health care is no exception. Employers are major innovators in health care, and transparency will accelerate our member companies’ ability to improve benefits and coverage, increase affordability for patients, and drive efficiency, quality, and value in the system.
- ERIC One-Pager: Full Transparency is Needed to Help Lower Health Care Costs
Outlines why pricing and quality transparency are essential to drive affordability and competition and emphasizes the employer community’s role in advancing transparency policies. - ERIC One-Pager: Congress Must End Arbitrary Price Increases and Unfair Contracting Practices
- Calls on lawmakers to rein in opaque pricing tactics and anti-competitive health care contracting and details needed reforms to protect payers and patients from unchecked provider leverage.
- ERIC Statement to House Energy and Commerce Committee Hearing on Health Care Affordability
- Provides employer perspectives on drivers of rising health care costs and recommends transparency reforms as foundational to any affordability strategy.
- ERIC Response to House Budget Health Task Force
- Highlights the importance of transparency in addressing health care spending growth and urges actionable policy changes to empower purchasers with pricing data.
- ERIC Affordability RFI Response
- Responds to federal inquiry with employer insights on the relationship between transparency, affordability, and market dynamics and proposes transparency-focused improvements.
- Consumers F1rst Statement to the Senate Finance Committee on Consolidation
- Explains how consolidation stifles competition and inflates prices and advocates for transparency and competitive safeguards.
- Consumers F1rst Statement to House Energy and Commerce Committee on Transparency and Competition
- Highlights the harms of market concentration and opaque pricing and pushes for enforcement of existing transparency rules and legislative updates.
- Health Pricing Stakeholder Letter
- Multi-stakeholder call to strengthen and enforce price transparency regulations that emphasize employer and consumer harms caused by hidden prices.
- Lame Duck Affordability Joint Sign-On Letter
- Collective support for policies advancing affordability through transparency and contracting reform.
