It’s time to reimagine health care
Decades of one-size-fits-all solutions have led to higher costs and less access. Building better health care for all starts with personalization and choice.
Health care is getting more unaffordable and less accessible, leading to worsening health and even lower life expectancies.
Break down barriers blocking choice and innovation — the keys to better health and well-being — and back efforts showing a better way.
Our partners are expanding choice, driving innovation, and building better health care for all.
50 state reforms passed since 2019, eight federal victories, and 158 million people with better health care options
America is supposed to have the world’s best health care. But all is not well.
COVID-19 illuminated barriers blocking people from the care they need. Life expectancy in the U.S. didn’t climb in recent years even though it rose in other industrialized countries and, due to the pandemic, in 2020 we saw the biggest drop in life expectancy since World War II.
That’s unacceptable. The Stand Together community is proving we can do better and build better health care that works for everyone.
Health care is nearly 20% of the economy and 100% of people rely on it. We have to get this right.
The Challenge
Our health care system had significant problems long before the pandemic. Yet most attempts to solve those problems have made things worse.
Too often, they reflect a top-down, one-size-fits-all approach that takes power from patients and doctors, stifles choices, and chokes the innovation that improves people’s lives.
Average cost of family health insurance plans — a 54% increase in 10 years
Percentage of Americans who avoid care because it’s unaffordable
Deaths caused by preventable chronic diseases every year
Americans face restrictions on what plans they can buy, what treatment they can receive, and where they can receive it. Prices are controlled, while new medical advances, new hospitals, and new provider models are blocked. Many of these efforts merely prop up politically favored companies. Americans pay the price in lower quality and higher costs.
Of Americans support increasing choice and lowering costs — a “personal option”
There’s broad public agreement that the health care system is diseased. Yet the cures have generally eluded society. Stand Together and our partners are surfacing those cures — and injecting them into the national debate.
The Partnerships
Our partners are building better health care from every angle. We’re helping them overcome the obstacles that stand in the way of progress, provide more people with the choices that will improve their health, and unleash a new era of medical advances that will benefit us all.
Community-based partners delivering personalized health care and tackling long-standing health challenges
Scholars researching the barriers to health care and how to break them
Activists from across the political spectrum urging policymakers to enact real reforms and stop harmful policies
Each of our partners is doing incredible things, yet the combination of our partners leads to even more amazing progress. Working with changemakers across society enables us to spur the systemic change that health care needs.
The Progress
Our partners are beginning to transform health care in promising ways.
To start, our partners are driving change that benefit millions and move faster than government attempts to kickstart innovation.
On the policy front, the most exciting progress is happening in the states. Our partners are helping citizens and elected officials remove barriers blocking choice and innovation. We saw unprecedented momentum in the COVID-19 pandemic.
Positive state reforms since 2019 — and another 19 harmful policies defeated
People with greater access to better and cheaper care
Our partners are making progress at the federal level, too. Our partners are supporting positive policies and opposing harmful ones, no matter who’s in power.
Federal policy wins since 2019, from expanded telehealth to stopping controls on drug pricing
Our work to reimagine health care is picking up speed. It’s a massive task, but it’s worth the effort. Health care matters to everyone, and together with our partners, we’ll build better health care that works for everyone.
Our partners have unleashed more progress on health care in the last three years than the previous 30 — and more is on the way.
