The Heartland Institute’s Consumers for Health Care Choices is working with allies to build a national grassroots movement in favor of consumer-driven health care. Instead of more regulations, mandates, and government entitlement programs, we support reforms that make private insurance less expensive and more portable and put patients in charge of a greater portion of their health care spending.
Waste and inefficiency are easily identified in our hospitals, government programs, and private insurance markets. We see it in the number of people who lack health insurance, the lack of price transparency in much of the health care system, the high rate of medical mistakes in hospitals, and the massive transfers of income – often from the poor and uninsured to the well-to-do and insured – that the current system generates.
A good health care system wouldn’t employ armies of gatekeepers to intrude in the relationship between doctors and patients, wouldn’t require lawsuits to ensure that victims of malpractice get adequate compensation or that incompetent providers lose their licenses, and wouldn’t require patients to wait eight to ten years for potentially life-saving drugs.
Since 2001, the consumer-driven health care movement has had a national outreach publication: Health Care News, published by The Heartland Institute. The publication provides robust and sustained investigation of the effects of government health care policies, with a primary editorial focus on the interests of consumers. By bringing scientific and economic facts to the forefront of an emotionally charged debate, Health Care News aims to provide solid, proven, research-based evidence for the best approaches to health care reform and policy at the state and national levels.
The nation’s system of private competitive health care finance and delivery is under attack by activist elected officials, advocacy groups, over-zealous regulators, and some of the biggest foundations in the United States. No plan to regulate or subsidize health care seems to be too radical or extreme not to be taken seriously by reporters and policymakers. Many of these same activists are targeting food and beverage manufacturers, restaurants, and our food supply with lawsuits, regulation, and punitive taxation.
Who will stand up to defend doctors in private practice, private insurers, prescription drug manufacturers, nonprofit and investor-owned hospitals, and most importantly, health care consumers? Where are the advocates for markets and sound science in health care policy? Where is the “grassroots movement” in favor of consumer-driven health care?
Consumers for Health Care Choices at The Heartland Institute is playing a major role in the effort to build a robust national movement for consumer-driven health care. Health Care News, Consumer Power Report and our Policy Studies, Policy Briefs, and Research & Commentary collections are giving elected officials the intellectual ammunition they need to defend free-market health care reform and consumer choice.
Heartland’s highly effective communications and government relations programs ensure our ideas are reaching policymakers and an extensive network of supporters and industry leaders. Social media sites allow us to reach large new audiences, giving health care consumers a much more effective voice in the national debate.
The Heartland Institute's experts on health care policy are available for legislative testimony, speaking engagements, and media interviews.
Certificate-of-Need Laws
Constitutional Health Care
Consumer Choice
Dental Care Access
Direct Primary Care
FDA & Prescription Drugs
Health Care Sharing Ministries
Health Insurance
Innovation & Regulation
Malpractice
Maintenance of Certification
Medicaid & Medicare
Price Transparency
Replacing Obamacare
Veterans Affairs
Free to Choose Medicine
Mental Health Awareness Month
The Case for Licensing Dental Therapists in North Dakota
Vaping, E-Cigarettes, and Public Policy Toward Alternatives to Smoking