A Note from Our Executive Director

With open enrollment season upon us, rapidly rising healthcare costs are top of mind for American families, employers, and policymakers. At the Peterson Center on Healthcare, our work to drive greater healthcare affordability is more important than ever—including grants and programs to build more efficient, competitive markets.  

I often say that as an organization, “we are in relentless pursuit of impact.” That means using all levers available to us to bend the cost curve, increase transparency, and enable data-driven healthcare purchasing. Beyond our programmatic work, that also means engaging policymakers to create the necessary conditions for advancing hospital price transparency and creating functional healthcare markets, which are critical to our mission. 

As part of our commitment to engaging policymakers, we recently submitted comments to further advance these aims, building on the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ focus on how thoughtful adoption of health technology and growing availability of price transparency data can support better health outcomes at sustainable costs. 

In response to the proposed Medicare Physician Fee Schedule: 

• The Center recommended that CMS base reimbursement for remote monitoring services on clinical value rather than equipment costs or physician time—and to establish evidence-based duration limits. This would more closely tie Medicare payment to the clinical benefits of these solutions, consistent with the findings of the Peterson Health Technology Institute’s (PHTI) assessments of remote monitoring for diabetes, hypertension, and musculoskeletal care. 

• CMS also requested comments on broadening Medicare coverage for digital mental health technologies. Based on PHTI’s review of digital solutions for mild to moderate depression and anxiety, we recommended that these tools are clinically effective and should be covered by Medicare. Payment rates should be tied to clinical value, and PHTI’s budget impact models could inform appropriate reimbursement amounts. 

For the Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System rule: 

• We recommended that CMS continue to improve price transparency data, which helps employers and consumers compare negotiated prices across hospitals. Our comments encouraged CMS to further standardize the hospital pricing files and strengthen reporting compliance.  

• We emphasized the importance of site-neutral payment policies in Medicare to limit existing incentives for market consolidation that drive up healthcare spending. Our comments also noted the Center’s funding support for the Center for Health Systems and Policy Modeling (CHSPM) at Johns Hopkins University, which recently published work on site-neutral payment policy options. CHSPM continues to develop empirical models of key Medicare payment policy proposals to inform policy decisions.  

The opportunity before us is significant. As we move into 2026, we’ll continue to engage on key regulatory and legislative opportunities where evidence can inform better policy. We look forward to sharing updates on how our work is translating into real-world impact.