Healthcare

Better, More Affordable Healthcare in the Digital Age

Healthcare costs in America are rising faster than almost any other category of product, often thanks to bad policy, special interests, and arbitrary rules. It’s making our country sicker and poorer.

Healthcare innovation and regulatory alignment can radically deflate the costs of care. Cicero healthcare policy can alleviate system pressures, open up the sector to innovation, create new markets and new types of care, and help hundreds of millions of Americans save on healthcare costs. State leaders implement these policies to save both lives and public resources.

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Right to Save

When patients don’t know the price of care before treatment, they are often forced to see more expensive doctors at more expensive facilities. Due to insurance rules, the patient may see no financial benefit for finding lower-cost care above the deductible.

Patient’s Right to Save requires providers to publish cash prices for procedures; it gives patients deductible credit for paying cash prices below their insurer’s lowest negotiated rate; and it incentivizes shopping beyond the deductible by letting the patient split the insurer’s cost savings when the patient pays a cash price below the insurer’s lowest negotiated rate.  Right to save is the next generation of price transparency.

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READ THE ONEPAGER

READ THE MODEL LEGISLATION

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Healthcare Data Rights

Entrepreneurs and innovators can lower the cost of healthcare and create new services that patients want with new digital tools. But it’s extremely difficult to do so because of bad regulations concerning healthcare data – and bad behaviors by the established providers.

Patients should always be allowed to access their own Electronic Health Records (EHR) and transfer those records to third parties of their choosing. Cicero’s EHR reform will guarantee that, improving patient experiences and the healthcare delivery system with new products.

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Reference-Based Pricing for State Systems

States can and should establish reference-based pricing schemes for state employee health benefit systems. Reference-based pricing decreases spending at high-priced providers and offers low-cost or free care to reward patients who choose lower cost providers. When state employees are incentivized to choose care options based on value, the benefit plans save money and drive the prevailing costs lower for all patients.

READ THE ONE-PAGER

READ THE WHITEPAPER

READ THE MODEL LEGISLATION

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International Physicians

Highly qualified physicians with foreign degrees living in the United States are often unable to practice in their local communities, or are subjected to arbitrary and burdensome licensing and residency requirements. At a time when the U.S. faces a physician shortage, especially in rural areas, that should change.

READ THE ONE-PAGER

READ THE WHITEPAPER

READ THE MODEL LEGISLATION