U.S. Chamber of Commerce Press Release:

Release Date: Jun 27, 2013Contact: 888-249-NEWS

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U.S. Chamber Unveils New Health Care Recommendations from Business Community

WASHINGTON, D.C.—On the eve of the anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court's decision on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), the U.S. Chamber’s Health Care Solutions Council released a report today outlining recommendations that focus on increasing value within our nation’s health care system, including additional reforms to control cost and improve quality.  The report suggests ways to leverage the successes in the employer-sponsored health care system, and proposes changes—both regulatory and legislative—to build on private sector advances in improving value.

“While the Chamber opposed the health reform law during the legislative debate, these recommendations provide thoughtful and carefully constructed changes that can be used to ease the impact of implementation, especially on small businesses, mitigate and control the growth of unnecessary costs, and protect and improve the private sector coverage that millions of Americans have long valued,” said Bruce Josten, the Chamber’s executive vice president for Government Affairs. “The strength of these recommendations lies in both the substantive content and the wide range of players in the health care space who, despite often having diverging interests, have come together to support these proposals.  The Chamber and the Solutions Council believe that leveraging the private sector initiatives currently underway and modifying the health care law to encourage further private sector innovation will lead to greater value in health care.”

The recommended changes released by the Chamber’s Health Care Solutions Council include:

• Facilitate and reward better coordination among all providers – nurses, hospitals, specialists, and primary care doctors;
• Advance efforts to define quality simply and clearly so that providers understand the metrics by which they will be measured;
• Remove barriers to easily understandable and comparable information on the cost and quality of health care services;
• Encourage consumers to use this information to make health care decisions based on careful consideration of the expense and the likely outcome;
• Protect the ability to buy (or offer) affordable health care coverage that promotes higher-value care in the near term; and
• Apply the lessons of these private sector reforms to improve Medicare and Medicaid by:
  • Providing better care to the rapidly growing beneficiary populations served by these programs entitlement programs; and
  • Supporting innovations in the employer-sponsored system.

One year ago, the U.S. Chamber convened a council of diverse member companies, including purchasers, suppliers, and deliverers of care. This council includes hospitals, insurers, pharmaceutical companies, medical device companies, large corporations and small businesses. Mark McClellan, director of Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform at the Brookings Institution, served as the Solutions Council’s facilitator.

When this Solutions Council began its efforts, the legal landscape and the future of the PPACA was uncertain. Following the Supreme Court’s June 28, 2012 decision and the country’s November 6, 2012 elections, implementation of the PPACA moved forward, and the Chamber’s Solutions Council developed this report to propose additional reforms to address variation and disparity in access, cost and quality, and ease the law’s burden on business and the public in the coming months.

The Solutions Council’s report is available here.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is the world’s largest business federation representing the interests of more than 3 million businesses of all sizes, sectors, and regions, as well as state and local chambers and industry associations.