As Hundreds of Health Advocates Gather in Washington, Families USA Releases New Agenda to Lower Health Care Costs

01.22.2025 /Press Release

As Hundreds of Health Advocates Gather in Washington, Families USA Releases New Agenda to Lower Health Care Costs

The newly released affordability agenda outlines bipartisan policies that will lower costs for people and generate billions of dollars in savings.

Families USA is hosting its 30th annual Health Action Conference this week, bringing together hundreds of advocates from across the country.

WASHINGTON, D.C. - After an election that focused on affordability, Families USA today released a concrete and actionable agenda of policy recommendations that would result in lower health care costs and generate hundreds of billions of dollars in savings for a nation that spends more than $3 trillion every year on health care.

This release comes after President Trump spent his first days in office signing a flurry of executive orders, none of which took any concrete steps to improve affordability for Americans or lower the cost of health care and instead focused on attacking specific communities, whether they be immigrant, transgender, or otherwise, making it harder for them to access health care.

This week, Families USA is bringing together hundreds of health advocates from across the country for the 30th Health Action Conference to discuss and craft transformational solutions for reshaping the future of health care in America, including well-vetted solutions that lower costs for people.

"Affordability is a top priority for Americans, who are deeply concerned about the cost of everyday necessities like food, housing and health care. In contrast to the message on affordability that voters sent this past election, the proposals from Republican lawmakers thus far - like cutting hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid - would actually shift and raise costs to working families, threatening the health and financial security of millions across this country," said Anthony Wright, executive director of Families USA. "If President Trump and Republican leaders are serious about taking on health costs, we have real, vetted, bipartisan solutions that will save people, families and taxpayers money. Policymakers should advance this actionable affordability agenda, helping save money for federal, state, and family budgets, and reject any proposals that would cut Medicaid and the ACA. Families USA stands ready to work with leaders who want to make health care affordable again, not strip health care away or make it more expensive for those who need it."

The newly released publication, "Making Health Care Affordable: Reining in Health Industry Abuses to Lower People's Costs and Generate Budget Savings" outlines several well-vetted, commonsense and bipartisan reforms that take aim directly at the health care affordability crisis to provide relief for families. If enacted, in total these policies would generate hundreds of billions of dollars in savings for state and federal budgets. The policy recommendations are broken down into the following four categories, and highlights from each category and the potential savings generated by the policy are included below:

• Promote meaningful transparency and accountability
  • Strengthen hospital and health plan price transparency by requiring all hospitals and health plans to disclose their negotiated rates in dollars and cents.
  • Advance dishonest billing reforms to ensure that big hospital corporations are not overcharging in outpatient settings, saving an estimated $403 million over ten years.
• Reduce waste and inefficiencies driven by corporate health systems
  • Enact a comprehensive same service, same price policy to stop big hospital corporations from charging more for the same care, and shifting patients to higher-cost care settings, saving an estimated $157 billion over ten years.
  • Strengthen the Medicare Advantage payment system against health care industry gaming to promote competition, saving an estimated $772 billion to $2.3 trillion over 10 years.
• Root out conflicts of interest that increase health care costs
  • Prohibit anti-competitive contracting including between providers and insurers that limit patients' access to alternative sources of health care, which is estimated to save as much as $194 billion over ten years.
• Provide direct relief to working families and patients
  • Lower the cost of prescription drugs by continuing to allow Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices, saving as much as $255 billion over the next ten years.
  • Extend advanced premium tax credits to ensure millions of working Americans and their families maintain access to affordable health care coverage.

Several of the policies included in the agenda including price and billing transparency and site-neutral payments for drug administration services passed the House of Representatives in 2023 with overwhelming bipartisan support as part of the Lower Costs, More Transparency Act but were ultimately left out of the final government funding package in late 2024.