On February 13, 2025, the Alliance to Fight for Health Care hosted a briefing on Site-neutral reform: The solution to controlling costs, improving access, featuring panelists from the American Benefits Council, The Winston Group, Families USA, and The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS) to discuss the advantages of site-neutral payment reform and how it can reduce costs and benefit patients – especially cancer patients.

The event featured new polling from David Winston with The Winston Group, a nationally recognized public research firm, highlighting voters’ support for site-neutral payment reform:

 

• By a margin of two to one, voters say the price of a health care service should be the same no matter where it is received (59%) versus those who believe the price should change based on where the care is received (30%)

• Voters believe the site of care should be accurately reported, disagreeing with hospitals not being required to report the exact location of where health care services are received (27-51 agree-disagree).

• Nearly two-thirds of voters favor a proposal to adopt site-neutral payment policies, which would standardize the Medicare reimbursement for certain health care services and procedures across all doctors’ offices, even if the doctor’s office was acquired by a hospital (64-14 favor-oppose).

 

Click here to view David Winston’s polling presentation including comments from focus group participants on site-neutral payment reform. (Vimeo link pw: SiteNeutral25)

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Ilyse Schuman, senior vice president of health policy at the American Benefits Council, moderated the panel, opening the discussion by providing an overview of site-neutral payment reform. She highlighted its longstanding bipartisan support and the potential for further reform to significantly improve how we pay for and deliver care. Site-neutral payments, she stressed, will help make sure patients get the right care, in the right location, at the right price. This will not only help reduce costs and benefit patients but could generate billions of dollars in federal revenue for Congress and has the potential to positively influence the whole U.S. health care system.

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Other panelists highlighted how site-neutral reform benefits patients.

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Jessica Burnell, director of federal affairs at The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS), discussed the impact on cancer patients, 42% of whom deplete their entire life’s assets within two years of their diagnosis. She cited research that site-neutral payment reform could result in $1,219 annual out-of-pocket savings for a typical multiple myeloma patient, for example. Oncology is an area particularly ripe for such change, she said, as the share of physician practices owned or controlled by hospital systems in the past decade has increased substantially, and along with it the cost to patients and their families.  

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Sophia Tripoli, senior director of health policy at Families USA, noted, “affordability is a top priority for Americans, who are deeply concerned about the cost of everyday necessities like food, housing and health care. If members of Congress are serious about taking on health costs, they should pass real, vetted, bipartisan solutions, like same service, same price reforms that will stop big hospital corporations from inflating their prices and charging people more for the same care. If an MRI costs $500 in one facility, there's no reason it should cost $2,500 in another. Same service, same price payment reforms will directly lower costs for our nation's families and save the federal government an estimated $157 billion over ten years. And unlike some proposals being floated by Congressional leadership that would severely cut Medicaid and other health programs, 'same service, same price' would not shift and raise costs to working families, threatening the health and financial security of millions across this country. Families USA stands ready to work with leaders who want to make health care affordable, not strip health care away or make it more expensive for those who need it.”

 

To view the full presentation, click here.

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