How Choice and Competition Can Improve Our Health Insurance Markets
In health care, consumer choice is one priority Republicans and Democrats agree on. But what choice looks like is another matter.
For those on the left, it might mean choice of doctors or hospitals in a ‘Medicare for all’ model. For those on the right, choice might mean a variety of health plans in an unregulated marketplace. In a new Commonwealth Fund issue brief, Harvard University’s Richard Frank examines the experience of the Affordable Care Act’s insurance marketplaces to identify areas where policymakers from both parties could harness choice and competition to improve health care coverage, consumer satisfaction, and affordability.
Ensuring that marketplaces encompass a geographic area and population large enough to support multiple insurers could be part of the solution, Frank says. Other options include strengthening reinsurance to make it possible for small insurers to participate and providing consumers with the resources they need to make informed plan choices.
Consumer discussing health insurance choices with an agent_1x1 Read the brief How Choice and Competition Can Improve Our Health Insurance Markets