"Healthcare reform should be designed to reduce costs for consumers. The Administration’s proposal misses the mark by not including any proposals that would directly control skyrocketing health insurance premiums and patient out-of-pocket costs. The recent CHIA data shows that insurance premiums and member cost-sharing both grew by 5.6% between 2017 and 2018. At the same time, payer’s administrative costs grew significantly, pulling further value out of the system. These substantial cost increases, paid by Massachusetts residents, are happening while the state’s total health care expenditure (THCE) growth rate was only 3.1%. The question for all policymakers should be: why are premiums and other patient costs increasing so much faster than the total healthcare expenditures growth rate? Payers can no longer point to prescription drug spending when justifying their price hikes, as it grew at 3.6% last year after paying back more than $1.8 billion in rebates to insurers.”
– Robert K. Coughlin, President & CEO, MassBio