Preparing State Health Insurance Markets for Provider Competition to Deliver Assembled Products with Warranties

A central aim of the Affordable Care Act is to improve value and efficiency in the U.S. health care system. Part of this process will involve changing how health care products are offered and paid for, and how they are sold in state insurance markets. To begin, William Sage and Joel Ario will identify value-based care models that have the potential to facilitate competition among providers to offer comprehensive, treatment-specific bundles of health care services with quality warrantees for the effectiveness of the care provided. The co-investigators will then assess existing obstacles to competition on these “assembled” and warranted products in state insurance markets, and provide practical guidance to state policy makers on how they might foster such competition. This project builds on earlier Fund supported work by Dr. Sage that defined assembled and warranted products and assessed their potential for achieving greater efficiency and provider accountability to patients in the U.S. health care system.