Leaders from Multiple Health Industry Sectors Propose Wide-Ranging Policy Agenda to Incoming Administration, New Congress
Healthcare Leadership Council Offers Steps to Stabilize Health Insurance Market, Intensify Fight against Chronic Disease, Accelerate Health Data Interoperability
WASHINGTON – The Healthcare Leadership Council, an alliance of leading healthcare companies from all sectors, has provided the new 115th Congress and the incoming Trump administration with a far-reaching health policy agenda for 2017, noting that immediate action in the legislative and regulatory arenas can “create a value-enhanced healthcare system that is affordable, accessible, and maintains health and well-being.”
The message to the new administration and Congress, “Better Healthcare for All Americans: A Proposed Agenda,” can be found at www.hlc.org/playbook.
In the document’s introduction, HLC told policymakers that they have “the opportunity to continue and accelerate the profound transformation of our healthcare system to benefit all Americans. We are on the threshold of an era in which people will live longer, healthier lives because they have access to new and more effective cures, therapies, and medical technologies; in which they will receive better care and better results due to the analysis and sharing of data; and in which they will benefit from a precise focus on protecting and maintaining health in a system that is efficient and sustainable.”
The policy recommendations include:
- Increasing investments in comprehensive, evidence-based wellness practices that will reduce healthcare costs and improve quality of life.
- Achieving systemwide health information interoperability by December 31, 2018.
- Reforming the federal fraud and abuse legal framework to enable multi-sector collaborations that will strengthen value-based healthcare efforts.
- Strengthening the healthcare workforce by expanding interstate licensure, allowing healthcare professionals to practice to the full extent of their training, and increasing federal funding for graduate medical education.
- Taking action to expand the use of telehealth in all accountable care models, managed care, Medicare Advantage, and fee-for-service plans.
- Harmonizing federal and state patient privacy laws and regulations to enable the interstate flow of healthcare data.
HLC also recommended a series of near-term actions to stabilize and improve the nongroup health insurance market including greater flexibility for health plans to design affordable products, creation of platforms that will enable health insurance consumers to compare coverage plans the way they do other consumer goods, curtailing special enrollment periods that contribute to market instability, and granting states the flexibility to establish network adequacy standards.
