House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-GA) released a video series on Tuesday demonstrating how the House Republican’s “A Better Way” policy agenda could improve healthcare accessibility, affordability, quality, innovation and choices.
Price outlined how A Better Way could eliminate the Affordable Care Act and advance patient-centered healthcare solutions. The narrowing of healthcare networks, the inability for patients to see the doctors they want and higher prices have created unfavorable market conditions, Price said.
“Really there’s no competition because the prices are set by and large by the federal government or by the insurance companies,” Price said. “That’s an area that if we were to have that dynamism of a patient-centered market it would allow for real competition in the system that would also drive down costs.”
While Americans were told that they would be able to keep their doctors or health plans if they chose to, Price added, that is not true.
“The regulatory oppression that is happening in the area of health care, right now, drives up the cost for every single patient…whoever it is that is providing the care,” Price said. “Each and every one of those individuals or those entities has a huge, long list of regulations that they must comply with. We think regulations are important. But, we think it’s important to make certain that each and every one of those regulations has an honest, realistic sense that if that regulation is complied with, if it’s followed, then it actually results in a higher quality of care, a better level of care.”
Price noted that lawsuit abuse is another “really significant” issue that drives up healthcare costs.
“There are varying estimates about what the cost to society is of the practice of defensive medicine but realistic studies…estimate that it is somewhere between one out of every three or one out of every four health care dollars spent every single year in this country,” Price said. “That means it’s between $600 and $800 billion a year wasted on the practice of defensive medicine.”
Price concluded that A Better Way would address the cost drivers of healthcare and advance solutions that put patients, families and doctors in charge.