Center for American Progress

RELEASE: New Report Finds State Innovations in Health Care Are Lowering Costs While Maintaining or Improving Quality of Care
Press Release

RELEASE: New Report Finds State Innovations in Health Care Are Lowering Costs While Maintaining or Improving Quality of Care

Washington, D.C. — Today, the Center for American Progress released a new report on the impact of major state payment and delivery system reforms to lower health care costs. The report, “Evaluating State Innovations to Reduce Health Care Costs,” looks at the results to date of different payment and delivery system reforms being implemented by Arkansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, and Oregon. The report finds that three of the four models have actually produced savings, while Massachusetts’ model has had more inconsistent results yet still carries potential.

“Many of the policies being implemented by these states should serve as a model for other state policymakers to lower health care costs and improve the quality and delivery of care,” said Thomas Huelskoetter, policy analyst of Health Policy at the Center for American Progress and author of the report. “After a year and a half of federal efforts to shift costs to consumers and gut Medicaid, these state innovations demonstrate a nonpartisan approach to making health care cost growth more sustainable while protecting patients’ care.”

The four innovation models reviewed in the report include:

  • Arkansas’ multipayer bundled payments
  • Maryland’s all-payer global budgets for hospitals
  • Massachusetts’ cost growth benchmark
  • Oregon’s coordinated care organizations

The report comes days after the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released new data on the results of Maryland’s global budgets for hospitals program.

Click here to read “Evaluating State Innovations to Reduce Health Care Costs” by Thomas Huelskoetter.

For more information on this topic or to speak with an expert, please contact Colin Seeberger at [email protected] or 202.741.6292.