Partnership for Sustainable Health Care Report

Five veteran health care leaders representing insurers, hospitals, employers, and consumers have published a report outlining an ambitious set of recommendations aimed at slowing rising costs, focused mainly on changing the way America pays for health care. The new group includes NBCH member coalition Pacific Business Group on Health, America’s Health Insurance Plans, a trade lobby for the insurance industry, hospital firm Ascension Health, the National Coalition on Health Care, a nonprofit research group, and Families USA, a consumer advocacy group.

Many of the ideas draw on existing efforts, such as accelerating Medicare’s efforts to pay for quality rather than just quantity of care. Working together as the Partnership for Sustainable Health Care, they also recommend greater incentives to promote quality, such as reimbursing providers more for treatments shown to be most effective — and reimbursing them less for those with more uncertain benefits. The distinguishing feature of this group and its recommendations are that they are aimed at true system-wide changes, not just federal or private sector solutions.