{"id":108182,"date":"2025-07-31T18:13:23","date_gmt":"2025-07-31T18:13:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/108182\/"},"modified":"2025-07-31T18:13:23","modified_gmt":"2025-07-31T18:13:23","slug":"improving-health-care-affordability-through-competition-and-transparency-american-enterprise-institute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/108182\/","title":{"rendered":"Improving Health Care Affordability through Competition and Transparency | American Enterprise Institute"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Introduction<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The high cost of U.S. health care presents a consistent challenge for policymakers. Total spending now<br \/>reaches nearly $5 trillion per year with federal outlays accounting for $1.9 trillion, or 27% of the federal<br \/>budget. Spending on public programs, like Medicare and Medicaid, directly strain the federal budget and are a major contributor to the nation\u2019s long-run fiscal imbalance. High costs in the commercial health care market\u2014where roughly 153 million people obtain coverage\u2014increase premium costs for employees and employers. The total premium costs for an employer-sponsored insurance plan for a family now averages over $25,000. That number is large relative to the median household income of roughly $80,000 and contributes to lower wage growth and employment.<\/p>\n<p>There are, thus, broad potential benefits to moderating the growth of health care spending. Successful efforts to do so can improve the country\u2019s long-run fiscal outlook, increase wage growth for workers, lower out-of-pocket costs, increase available funds for other policy goals, and much more. However, this does not argue in favor of indiscriminate cuts to health spending. A large portion of health care spending goes towards services or products that deliver significant value. Reducing spending in those areas is likely to lower welfare. Instead, policy should be designed to target settings where the link between spending and value is most tenuous.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.aei.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Ippolito_HELP_Testimony.pdf?x85095\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Read the full testimony here.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Introduction The high cost of U.S. health care presents a consistent challenge for policymakers. Total spending nowreaches nearly&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":108183,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[210,1141,1142,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-108182","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-care","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-health-care","10":"tag-healthcare","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114949207566385740","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108182","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108182\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108183"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}