The rapid rise in healthcare costs has executives in the corporate world worried, and they want the government to play a bigger role in controlling it, according to a new report.
The report, compiled by Purchaser Business Group on Health and the Kaiser Family Foundation, includes survey responses from executive decision-makers at 302 large private companies. The survey was conducted in December and January.
An overwhelming majority (96%) of respondents believe that the cost of health benefits is excessive. The main contributors to high costs are prescription drug prices, market consolidation among providers, unhealthy behaviors among large segments of the population and fee-for-service payments, according to the executives.
About 87% of respondents said that the cost of providing health benefits to employees will become unsustainable in the next five to 10 years.
To combat this, respondents said that the government playing a greater role in providing coverage and containing costs would be better for their business (83%) and better for their employees (86%).
When asked why, 43% of those who wanted more government intervention said that it could reduce employee premium costs, and 42% said that it could reduce costs for employers.
A majority of respondents (92%) said that the government should pursue policies that would strengthen antitrust enforcement and prohibit anticompetitive behavior by providers, drug manufacturers and payers. About 90% said that federal action should focus on enhancing price transparency.
Large employers also support more direct government action in healthcare, with 78% saying they would back policies that cap prices for hospitals in markets with limited or no competition, and 75% reporting they would support policies that limit prices charged by out-of-network providers in surprise billing situations.
According to employers, greater government intervention would relieve them of the responsibility and costs of managing health benefits (61%), but on the flip side, about 43% believe that the government doesn’t have a great track record of running big programs effectively.
“The business executives we surveyed showed perhaps a surprising degree of openness to proposals that would increase government roles in healthcare,” the report’s authors wrote.
But, according to follow-up interviews, this appears to be based more on a long-standing frustration with the healthcare system and less so on a belief that the government operates programs better or more effectively than the private sector, they wrote.
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