Issues

Choice

Your Right to Choose Your Health Plan and Doctor

Americans have a right to choose the healthcare coverage options and providers that best suit the individual needs of themselves, their employees, or their families.  As the cost of healthcare has steadily gone up, the conversation has evolved to consider alternative models to a system that exhibits choice in its approach to healthcare delivery.  Unfortunately, those alternatives seek to take away the choice that American consumers deserve and have come to rely on.  Further, by eliminating choice, those approaches would also impact the innovations that lead to improvements to access, affordability, and quality in healthcare.  Rather than throw out what works, the focus should be on incentivizing the conditions that produce a robust, consumer-centered healthcare system.

  • Consumer-centered care is vital.  Allowing healthcare beneficiaries to choose a plan that will fit them best allows them to have a voice when it comes to their own care.
  •  The rise of private equity has resulted in increased consolidation among healthcare providers – whether physicians’ offices being acquired by large hospitals or health systems merging to drive out competition.
  •  Medicare Advantage plans represent what can be accomplished by bringing together the best of the private and public sectors.
  • Medicaid Managed Care has the potential to optimize states’ and the federal government’s investment in this vital healthcare program serving some of the most vulnerable populations.