AHA Responds to House Budget Committee Health Care Task Force Request for Information

Dear Chair Burgess and Representatives Ferguson, Smucker, Carter, Moore and Yakym:

On behalf of our nearly 5,000 member hospitals, health systems and other health care organizations, our clinician partners — including more than 270,000 affiliated physicians, two million nurses and other caregivers — and the 43,000 health care leaders who belong to our professional membership groups, the American Hospital Association (AHA) writes in response to the questions posed by the House Budget Committee Health Care Task Force. We support your efforts to reduce health care spending, encourage innovation and ensure patients receive quality, affordable health care.

In recent years, health care spending growth has largely been driven by increased use and intensity of services. In other words, more people are getting care, and the care they are getting is more involved than in the past. Much of this is the result of expansions in health care coverage, improved efforts to connect people to needed care, advances in medicine and technology and increased prevalence of chronic disease.

Hospital care requires a range of inputs such as wages for clinical and other personnel, prescription drugs, administrative software and other technology, food, medical devices, utilities and professional insurance. Steep increases in the prices for certain inputs, such as drugs and administrative processes mandated by health plans, can undermine hospitals’ efforts to reduce the cost of care.

Despite the challenging financial situation many hospitals and health systems are experiencing, we will continue to seek options to improve the affordability of health care in ways that will not compromise access to high quality, safe care.

Thank you for your interest in addressing these important issues. Our recommendations are in the following attachment.

Sincerely,

/s/

Lisa Kidder Hrobsky
Senior Vice President
Advocacy and Political Affairs

Attachment: AHA Recommendations

CC: The Honorable Jodey Arrington, Chair, House Budget Committee