About
The mission of the Open Markets Health and the Public Interest program is to develop and advocate for fair, sustainable, evidence-based policies that will help people to attain the highest possible standards of physical and mental well-being. Its focus is on how market rules and structures affect health, including through socio-economic determinants such as poverty and environmental degradation, as well as through factors that determine the quality, safety, efficiency, and fairness of hospitals and other health care providers.
Today, the health and life expectancies of large segments of the U.S. population are declining, even as the cost of health care has become a major source of economic stress and downward mobility. We believe that alarming levels of corporate concentration and malfeasance play a large role in driving this crisis. Examples include not only the illnesses and premature deaths caused by pollution and lack of access to healthy food, but also the high prices and loss of quality caused by the cornering and cartelizing of different health care markets, from drugs and hospital services to medical device makers and insurance companies.
In addition to calling for more effective use of traditional antitrust policies, the Open Markets Health Policy Program has pioneered many new policy ideas for addressing these market failures. These include a Medicare Prices for All proposal for eliminating price discrimination in health care, as well as policies for strengthening locally owned, community-minded health care providers while demanding higher levels of public service and accountability from corporate hospital chains.