Overview
The Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System, to hold increases in national health expenditures to no more than long-term economic growth, recommends a set of synergistic provider payment reforms, consumer incentives, and systemwide reforms to confront costs while improving health system performance. This approach could slow spending by a cumulative $2 trillion by 2023—if begun now with public and private payers acting in concert. Payment reforms would: provide incentives to innovate and participate in accountable care systems; strengthen primary care and patient-centered teams; and spread reforms across Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurers. With better consumer information and incentives to choose wisely and lower provider administrative costs, incentives would be further aligned to improve population health at more affordable cost. Savings could be substantial for families, businesses, and government at all levels and would more than offset the costs of repealing scheduled Medicare cuts in physician fees.
Executive Summary
Health spending as a share of U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) has climbed steadily over the past half-century. Today, it constitutes 18 percent of GDP, up from 14 percent in 2000 and 5 percent in 1960, and we are well on our way to 21 percent by 2023, based on current projections. This increased dedication of economic resources to the health sector, however, is not yielding commensurate value in terms of improving population health or patients’ experiences with care.
On average, the U.S. spends twice as much on health care per capita, and 50 percent more as a share of GDP, as other industrialized nations do. And yet we fail to reap the benefits of longer lives, lower infant mortality, universal access, and quality of care realized by many other high-income countries. There is broad evidence, as well, that much of that excess spending is wasteful. Stabilizing health spending and targeting it in ways that ensure access to care and improve health outcomes would free up billions of dollars annually for critically needed economic and social investments—both public and private—as well as higher wages for workers.
In this report, The Commonwealth Fund Commission on a High Performance Health System endorses the goal of holding future growth in total health spending to a rate no greater than that of long-term growth in GDP, while simultaneously moving toward a high performance health care system. This is an ambitious goal, to be sure, particularly given our aging population and the commitment to access for all. But with such a high proportion of our economic resources already devoted to health care, and with abundant evidence that we can do better, such a target should be achievable. It is also a key to enabling broader economic growth and a more affordable health care system for businesses, families, and federal, state, and local governments.
The policies described below should produce substantial reductions in health spending. But if spending growth targets are not met, further action should be taken to address areas in which spending growth is excessive. This should include more aggressive implementation of those policies, focusing particularly on both geographic areas and types of services that are found to be drivers of excessive spending and spending growth. The establishment of targets, then, can serve both as a metric to guide policy development and as an incentive for all involved parties to act to make them effective.
To show how future health spending growth could be held to a national target and stabilized while moving toward a high performance health care system, this report lays out a synergistic strategy relying on three broad thrusts:
- Provider payment reforms to promote value and accelerate health care delivery system innovation.
- Policies to expand options and encourage high-value choices by consumers armed with better information about the quality and cost of care.
- Systemwide action to improve how health care markets function, including reducing administrative costs and setting national and regional targets for spending growth.
The set of policies the Commission has identified in these three areas would interact with each other in mutually supportive ways to address market forces that contribute to high and rising costs but are failing to produce value. By applying these policies collectively—with the public and private sectors working in concert—the nation would be able to benefit from their synergy. Analysis of specific policies consistent with these approaches indicates that they could slow growth in national spending by a cumulative $2 trillion through 2023. Achieving these potential savings depends on starting now and acting together.
Strategic Approach
This report translates these three broad thrusts into 10 policies to illustrate our comprehensive approach to stabilizing spending growth. The policies reinforce each other to address concerns about both public and private health care costs while also improving health outcomes and patients’ care experiences.
Provider Payment Reforms to Promote Value and Accelerate Delivery System Innovation: Create incentives to coordinate care, lower costs, and improve outcomes.
- Revise Medicare physician fees and methods of updating payment so that we pay for value. Replace Medicare’s current system for determining physician fees (and the resulting reductions called for under current law) by holding fees constant at their current level, while adjusting relative payment rates for services that meet specified criteria as “overpriced.” Provide increases in future payments only for providers that participate in payment and delivery system innovations that are accountable for the populations they serve. Institute competitive bidding for medical commodities such as drugs, equipment, and supplies.
- Strengthen primary care and support care teams for high-cost, complex patients. Promote patient-centeredness and better outcomes by changing payment for primary care to reward care management, coordination, and a team-based, systemic approach to treating patients who are covered by Medicare, Medicaid, other public programs, and by private plans participating in the new health insurance exchanges.
- Bundle hospital payments to focus on total costs and patient outcomes. Accelerate the implementation of provider reimbursement approaches in which a single payment is made for all services provided during an episode of care involving a hospital stay, including postacute services for specified procedures and conditions, for patients in Medicare, Medicaid, other public programs, and private plans participating in the new health insurance exchanges.
- Adopt payment reforms across markets, with public and private payers working in concert. Align payment incentives across public and private payers to enable and support care systems that are more accountable for providing high-value care. Require private plans participating in health insurance exchanges to incorporate alternative payment approaches to support delivery system innovation, such as payment for primary care medical homes, care teams, bundled payment for episodes involving hospital care, and shared savings or global payment arrangements with networks of providers. Encourage private insurance plans in each state to negotiate health care prices that are consistent with value and efficiency—and not just pass on higher prices to consumers.
Policies to Expand Options and Encourage High-Value Choices by Consumers: Create incentives for consumers to choose high-value care and high-performing care systems based on comparative information about quality and costs.
- Offer Medicare beneficiaries a new “Medicare Essential” plan that provides more comprehensive benefits and better protection against catastrophic costs and includes provider and enrollee incentives to achieve better care, better health, and lower costs. Develop a value-based benefit design that encourages beneficiaries to obtain care from high-performing care systems. These incentives would be aligned with payment reforms that give providers incentives to develop and join innovative care systems that improve patient outcomes and care experiences.
- Provide positive incentives for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries to seek care from high-value, patient-centered medical homes, care teams, accountable care organizations, and integrated delivery systems. Work with local employer coalitions to spread the same value-based approach, with positive incentives for patients in private plans.
- Enhance information on clinical outcomes of care and patient experiences to inform treatment decisions and choices of providers and care systems. Accelerate the “meaningful use” of health information technology to assess and compare clinical outcomes over time from alternative treatment choices and, through use of patient registries, to enable post-marketing surveillance of safety and care outcomes. Provide consumers and clinicians with transparent information on costs and prices to further inform choices.
Systemwide Action to Improve How Health Care Markets Function: Reduce administrative costs, reform malpractice policy, and set targets for total spending growth nationally and at other geographic levels.
- Simplify and unify administrative policies and procedures across public and private health plans to reduce provider and plan administrative costs and complexity.
- Reform medical malpractice policy and link to payment in order to provide fair compensation for injury while promoting patient safety and adoption of best practices.
- Establish spending targets. Target total combined public and private spending to grow at a rate no greater than economic growth per capita. Set targets for the nation (long-term GDP growth per capita), as well as for states, regions, or localities, and adjust policies as appropriate based on progress in meeting targets. Collect data to inform and enable state and local action to develop focused policies if growth exceeds targets.
Setting a target for overall spending growth—across all payers, public and private, and across all providers in all areas—of no greater than economic growth per capita would provide guidance for these policies and any further policy action that is needed. Collecting data on total spending and sources of spending growth at the national, state, and local levels would enable state and local governments to set their own targets and develop focused policies to meet them.
More consistent payment approaches across payers also could help counteract the concentration of market power among providers. Allowing multiple payers to negotiate jointly to employ similar payment methods and more consistent pricing under state or federal government auspices and aligning payment with efficient care and value, rather than simply passing on higher prices in consolidated markets, could lower private insurance premium costs for businesses and families. Joint negotiations among health care purchasers would need to take place under public auspices to ensure accountability.
Over time, the policies described in this report should generate evolutionary forces that lead to the formation of health care delivery organizations that are held accountable for the costs of care as well as health outcomes and care experiences. By assessing system performance continually relative to the spending target, flexible policies could be calibrated to address areas in which there is excessive cost growth.
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