It's Time for an Independent Review of the Health Care System

“Health care costs are too high” may be one of the most uttered phrases in American politics. Public officials, political leaders, policy experts ­ –– and the patients who bear enormous financial burdens –– have all but made it a national slogan. 

Why? Well first, because it's a lived experience for tens of millions of Americans. People are paying more than they ever have before despite marginal reforms that over promise on relief but underdeliver on savings. As a nation, we spend nearly 20 percent of our economy on health care and over $12,500 for each person.

A more important question to examine, however, is why won’t these stubborn costs finally come down? Health care affordability routinely polls among the top issues for voters of both political parties and has been a priority in every Congress and state legislative session in recent memory. 

So, what’s the hold up? That answer is more complicated and is rooted in harsh realities that not everyone is fighting for the same thing.  

I know this because I’ve seen it first-hand as a caretaker for a sister who suffered from cerebral palsy and complicating blood disorders, and a brother with ALS.

I know this because my family struggled to navigate conflicting medical opinions about our mother’s advanced lung cancer, and because we scrambled for nine long years to maintain the caregivers and supplies our father needed at home to manage his Alzheimer’s. Unfortunately, our challenges navigating an incredibly complex health care system is a shared experience with too many American families. 

And as governor of New Mexico, I saw reform-minded policymakers on both sides of the aisle working in good faith to advance reforms to benefit patients, only to be blocked by corporate interests who benefited from the status quo. Unfortunately, I wasn’t alone in this experience — many red and blue state governors seeking reform suffered the same fate.

Sadly, today’s system of advocacy is a vicious cycle that is designed to prevent transparency and accountability, misinform the public, and grind any real progress to a halt.

The casualty in all of this? Patients like my sister and brother, and families and caretakers like me, struggling to understand the system and keep up with the rising cost of health care.

For Americans to finally feel relief, we need to both expose and unpack why these problems persist and provide the public an honest assessment of where all the costs of health care stem from. Only with this transparency can we create a pathway for real reform.

Patients are still being hit with surprise medical bills and egregious surcharges that far exceed any reasonable expectations for the cost of care. 

Americans are still not being provided transparency into the medical supply chain, nor the customer shopping tools that would better inform their health-care decisions and purchases. 

And the savings that health care middlemen like insurance companies and pharmacy benefit managers claim they negotiate are still failing to make their way down to the patients who desperately need them. 

To put it simply: We need to pull back the curtain on the special interests who promote the status quo at the expense of reform.

At the Institute for Health Policy Accountability, we’re going to shine a light on the most glaring problems in the system, promote common sense reforms, and expose special interests who seek to misdirect and misinform the public through well-funded advocacy efforts.

By convening health policy experts and public officials from across the political spectrum, we will offer an independent review of what policies are working and expose corporate interests’ efforts to block reform and maintain the status quo.    

Whether we’re Democrats or Republicans, we must first ensure the public understands how the current health care system works and expose the underlying reasons for why our care costs so much.

Only when we accomplish that, can we take the first step towards a more rational and affordable health care system that puts patients first. 

Susana Martinez served as Governor of New Mexico from 2011 – 2018. She was New Mexico’s first female governor and the first Hispanic female governor in the history of the United States.