Healthcare consumes a large portion of our national economy and the costs continue to grow. At an estimated $2.64 trillion, 17.7 percent of our national GDP, is spent on healthcare. According to Altarum Institute’s Center for Studying Health Spending, at the current rate of growth, healthcare costs are predicted to nearly double to $4.5 trillion in 2019. At that point, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services data indicates that healthcare costs will account for 19.5 percent, or roughly one-fifth, of GDP.

Third-party payer systems attempt to control costs by partially shifting the economic decision from patients to non-personnel systems based on uniform rules of control. Rather than control costs, these systems simply insulate patients from the real cost. Only by empowering patients to take greater control over the healthcare experience can we expect to break the trend of rising healthcare costs. By improving the ultimate patient experience and eliminating fee-for-service delivery, we create competitive pressures to eliminate redundancy and non-essential services that drive up healthcare costs.