The U.S. health care system is inefficient, unreliable, and crushingly
expensive. There is no shortage of proposed solutions, but central to
the best of them is the idea that health care needs more competition. In
other sectors, competition improves quality and efficiency, spurs
innovation, and drives down costs. Health care should be no exception.
Yet providers and payers continue to try to stymie competition. Many are
actively pursuing consolidation, buying up market share and increasing
their bargaining power. In this article, the authors argue that health
care payers and providers must stop fighting the emergence of a
competitive health care marketplace and make competing on value central
to their strategy. All stakeholders in the health care
industry—regulators, providers, insurers, employers, and patients
themselves—have roles to play in creating real competition and positive
change. In particular, five catalysts will accelerate progress: Put
patients at the center of care, create choice, stop rewarding volume,
standardize value-based methods of payment, and make data on outcomes
transparent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]