Voters Want Insurance Reform. Now.
Every election cycle, candidates promise to address healthcare costs. This year, polling shows that insurance vertical integration and abuse issues, in particular, are a crisis that voters need Washington to solve.
The nation’s largest insurers now own or are directly affiliated with the largest pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), specialty pharmacies, group purchasing organizations (GPOs), provider networks, and other entities – the case for structural reform of the vertically integrated insurance industry has never been stronger.
Nearly half of registered voters (47%) name corporate health insurance companies as most responsible for rising healthcare costs. In New Hampshire, for example, 90% of residents agree that insurance companies have too much power over what providers can prescribe, and 92% believe insurers prioritize profits over patients.
A recent KFF Health Tracking Poll found that 66% of adults call insurance delays and denials a major problem. Among insured adults, 69% say prior authorization is burdensome, and 34% name it the single biggest non-cost barrier to accessing care.
These vertically integrated empires control what drugs patients can access, which pharmacies can fill them and what providers can prescribe. The same corporation that collects the premium, manages the benefit and processes the claim also decides what care gets approved – and profits at every step along the way.
This is not incidental. It is structural. That is why leaders across the country must commit to confronting the conflicts of interest baked into vertical integration.
More than half of voters say it is extremely important for candidates to talk about healthcare costs while 43% say lowering costs is the single most critical issue for Congress to address – ahead of housing, jobs, immigration and crime. In national battleground surveys, 91% say Congress can act to lower costs. And there is significant support for concrete reforms:
91% support requiring insurers to pass manufacturer discounts directly to patients.
84% support public disclosure of insurer revenue and profits.
82% say bringing down healthcare costs should be a top congressional priority.
Candidates on both sides of the aisle are being asked to stand for patients over profits. The polling makes the political calculus simple: insurance reform, especially of the vertically integrated, is not a liability. It is a mandate.
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