With healthcare affordability set to influence voters’ decisions in next week’s midterm elections, the Healthcare Financial Management Association (HFMA) is calling on healthcare leaders to move beyond finger-pointing and work together to address rising costs.
HFMA is a not-for-profit, nonpartisan organization which aims to lead the financial management of healthcare with guidance, education, and practical solutions for its more than 150,000 members.
A Morning Consult poll commissioned by HFMA found that of 2,022 registered voters polled, 54% said that healthcare has become less affordable this year. A majority of both parties – 61% for Republicans and 83% for Democrats – said that healthcare affordability will affect their upcoming vote. 57% expressed concern about hospital closures, highlighting the tension between lowering healthcare spending while still preserving access to care.
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A KFF poll produced similar results: six in 10 respondents expressed worry over being able to afford healthcare, and around half agreed that it is “extremely important for candidates in the midterm elections to talk about the cost of healthcare.”
In response, HFMA is urging financial leaders across healthcare and other key stakeholders, including providers, payers, employers, purchases, and fintech leaders to sign its Declaration on Healthcare Affordability and Sustainability. A recent announcement by HFMA explains, “the declaration states that different healthcare sectors must stop blaming each other for rising costs and work together to solve these challenges in innovative ways.”
In an email, Richard L. Gundling, HFMA’s chief mission impact officer, said the effort must focus on eliminating unnecessary costs rather than simply shifting financial burdens from one stakeholder to another.
“If an employer lowers its costs by increasing employees’ deductibles, the bill hasn’t gone away, the employee is paying more of it,” Gundling said.
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Instead, he said that stakeholders should target administrative inefficiencies, including repetitive paperwork and unnecessary claims disputes, while establishing shared measures of success and a clear understanding of how any potential savings will impact the patients whom healthcare is ultimately meant to serve.
“We should measure both the expense we eliminate and whether patients, employers, and taxpayers actually benefit,” Gundling said. “That means looking at what people pay, the overall cost of care, and whether access and quality improve. Savings have to show up beyond an individual organization’s balance sheet.”
Gundling emphasized that the initiative applies especially to rural and financially vulnerable hospitals which could face closures, leaving the surrounding populations without access to care.
“People want care they can afford and confidence that it will be there when they need it. Those goals go together,” he said.
HFMA’s Vitalic Health Initiative, launched earlier this year, strives to support financial sustainability for health systems and improve health outcomes and access to care for patients across the U.S. The initiative encourages data-driven decision-making, testing of innovative approaches to cost savings, and careful measurement of whether those solutions work to reduce spending without compromising quality or access. The goal? Reduce the burden of consumer healthcare costs, which in turn may help to address that looming concern for voters.
HFMA’s declaration aims to translate that sentiment into coordinated action, with affordability treated as a series of interconnected challenges that all healthcare leaders must face together. The organization is inviting healthcare finance leaders and other stakeholders to endorse the declaration and participate in developing concrete, sustainable solutions to our nation’s healthcare affordability crisis.
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