Addressing Health Care Cost Growth — Why and How States Should Lead

With health care affordability high on U.S. voters’ minds, the upcoming election and subsequent legislative sessions offer an opportunity to make the case for restraining cost growth while addressing the increasing financialization of the U.S. health system, which poses a serious threat to the public good and undermines physicians’ ability to live up to their professional values.¹ Turning concrete proposals into an election issue can render subsequent legislative success more likely.² And, because the prospects for needed federal reforms are poor and states are better positioned than the federal...