The Alliance for Community and Regional Healthcare Solutions (ACRHS) believes that the United States has one last opportunity to demonstrate that a hybrid, public-private system can provide universal, affordable, and equitable health care to everyone.
- We believe that federal and state policies should establish reasonable baseline principles for healthcare coverage, cost, and quality, but that those policies should, to the greatest extent possible, empower community and regionally led solutions rather relying solely on top-down, “one-size-fits-all” comprehensive reforms.
- Federal and state policies should focus on levelling the playing field for communities and regions in renegotiating relationships with providers and insurance carriers in their markets. Specifically, policymakers and should prioritize reforms that:
- Create strong incentives for providers and carriers to craft local solutions in the markets where they operate;
- Reduce or eliminate the anti-consumer distortions that arise from market concentration by providers or carriers in local and regional markets; and
- Eliminate disparities in delivery, accessibility, and affordability of health care due to race, income, gender, national origin, or other illegitimate sources of historical discrimination.
- Federal and state funding and philanthropic investments should support the capacity of communities and regions to organize effectively, access and analyze critical data, define healthcare priorities, and engage providers and carriers in constructive negotiations.
- Federal and state policies should focus on levelling the playing field for communities and regions in renegotiating relationships with providers and insurance carriers in their markets. Specifically, policymakers and should prioritize reforms that:
- We believe that hospitals, independent providers, and insurance carriers can and should be part of community and regional healthcare solutions, but that some must first stop being part of the problem.
- We believe that current hospital and hospital-physician consolidation and rural-urban referral and transfer trends usually do not serve the interests of communities.
- We believe that federal Medicare payment rates offer a useful benchmark for assessing the reasonableness of provider payments, but that communities and regions should have flexibility to align health care systems and resources with local priorities. Communities and regions should be empowered to:
- Strengthen public health infrastructures and primary care capacity;
- Negotiate appropriate rates and fee schedules with providers in their communities;
- Influence benefit designs -- including premiums, co-pays, and deductibles – offered by insurance carriers and expand consumer choice of plans; and
- Hold nonprofit hospitals locally accountable to sincere and collaborative community benefit obligations and to catalyze reconsideration of individual hospitals’ tax-exempt status, where necessary.