Washington, D.C. — As Big Medicine companies rake in unprecedented profits by charging Americans more for lower quality care and pushing independent practitioners out of business, Economic Liberties today released a comprehensive policy agenda to restore health care affordability and control to patients, clinicians, and communities across the country.

The agenda arrives as coverage cuts from President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill strain an already broken system. The paper’s central argument is that the crisis is not an accident but the product of decades of neoliberal policy choices that let a handful of corporations — insurance conglomerates, pharmaceutical middlemen, mega-hospitals, Big Pharma, and private equity-backed practices — capture the health care system. Until recently, neither political party has offered any comprehensive solutions to address the corporatization problem. Instead we see proposals finely focused on the expansion of access and extension of public subsidies but that leave Big Medicine’s power unchecked. Without addressing the consolidation issue we will continue to see  American families,  taxpayers, and clinicians pushed to the financial brink.

The numbers say it all. Since 2005, the annual cost of employer-sponsored family coverage has nearly tripled, and the U.S. now spends roughly $15,000 per person on health care, more than double what other wealthy countries spend. Those costs, however, don’t buy better care. Consolidation has instead tracked with physician and drug shortages, longer wait times, growing care deserts and higher denial rates. The U.S. now lags peer nations on life expectancy and maternal health.  

“For decades, health care reform has focused on expanding private coverage and putting more money into a broken system while allowing corporate giants to consolidate power and drive up costs,” said Emma Freer, Senior Policy Analyst for Health Care at the American Economic Liberties Project. “Working families have paid more only to receive lower quality care. Americans need a new policy paradigm that actually takes on the root causes of the crisis: consolidation, corporate control, and lack of competition. This agenda is about moving beyond the status quo to build a health care system where patients come first, clinicians can thrive, and every American can afford the care they need.”

“The health care crisis didn’t happen by accident, it is the direct result of decades of neoliberal policy choices that handed more power to corporate health care giants while families paid the price,” said Morgan Harper, Director of Policy and Advocacy at the American Economic Liberties Project. “The choice now is clear: continue to watch the U.S. health care system spiral into profit-driven chaos or finally treat the Big Medicine disease to create a health care system that puts patients and clinicians in control of care. This agenda presents a roadmap for how to do it.”

The agenda offers a four-part “treatment plan” that stands to save $795 billion annually, or more than $6,000 per household: 

• Break Up Big Medicine: Congress should break up vertically integrated health care giants by banning insurers, pharmaceutical middlemen, and private-equity firms  from owning or controlling medical practices and pharmacies  to reduce conflicts of interest and lower prices.
• Bring Down Prices: Congress should cap health care and prescription drug prices, expand public insurance and drug manufacturing options, ban insurer practices like prior authorization that delay or deny medically necessary care, and reduce out-of-pocket costs such as deductibles and copays.
• Build Capacity: Congress should strengthen the health care system by ensuring the financial viability of independent practitioners, expanding the physician workforce, increasing investment in community-based and public providers, banning noncompete agreements, and rebuilding the domestic drug manufacturing sector to improve access and reduce shortages.
• Bolster Enforcement: Congress should strengthen antitrust enforcement by closing loopholes that let pharmaceutical manufacturers and middlemen block competition, banning practices like spread pricing and patent abuse that keep prices high, and giving federal regulators the resources to crack down on monopolistic behavior.

These reforms draw broad, bipartisan support. Recent polling found that 71% of voters back federal legislation to break up vertically integrated health conglomerates, including 75% of Democrats and 70% of Republicans, and that 80% say hospital systems, insurers, and private equity firms have too much control over their health care, including 79% of Republicans. 

Economic Liberties’ health care Agenda follows the June launch of the Break Up Big Medicine coalition, a group of 26 member organizations made up of practitioners, independent pharmacists, small business owners, patients, academics and policy organizations. In other words, a cross-section of the people Big Medicine has squeezed.

Read the full report, “Break Up Big Medicine: An Agenda to Restore Power Over the U.S. Health Care System to Patients and Practitioners While Saving Families More Than $6,000 a Year,” here.

Learn more about the Break Up Big Medicine movement here.

Learn more about Economic Liberties here.