Employers Flex Their Muscles as Health Care Purchasers

Engaged health care purchasers-both individual and group-can stimulate some good, healthy competition in the health care system, and competition needs to be based on results. To determine results, we need accepted measures of quality and efficiency that make sense. Then, performance on those measures must be disclosed publicly. Only when this information is available to consumers and other purchasers of health care will they be able to make informed choices and reward effective and efficient health care providers.