The Galen Institute at Donors works on public policy ideas that:
- Allow consumers to choose their own doctors so that they are in charge of medical decisions
- Give working Americans freedom from the fear that losing a job may mean losing health insurance
- Encourage research and innovation to find more cures and better treatments for illnesses
- Provide broader access to new medical treatments
- Embrace the use of health care information technologies to expand access to quality care
- Reduce costs based upon competition, not price controls
Opportunities
The public is keenly focused on issues that affect the quality of their lives and well-being, and health care policy has gained increasing attention in the national policy debate. This is a fresh opportunity to educate citizens about the importance of decisions that impact them and their families.
Galen is actively involved with all these audiences as we advance 21st century solutions that embrace freedom and consumer choice.
Policy leaders also rely on our fact-driven research and innovative ideas to gain insights into policy, and we work with them to formulate solutions. We provide advice to policymakers at both the federal and state levels to help them develop sensible, patient-centered policy options.
It is no coincidence that the United States offers the highest-quality health care in the world and that it repeatedly has ejected a single-payer, government-run health system. The challenge for the twenty-first century is to modernize out-of-date policy decisions to make high-quality health care accessible and affordable for all Americans.
We advocate for policy changes that will give all Americans the opportunity to obtain the health coverage that best suits their needs.
1. Policy Initiatives
Consumer empowerment
We work to educate the public about arrangements that will allow consumers to control their routine health spending while still having protection from catastrophic expenses. If consumers were to gain more control over their health spending, they could transform the health care marketplace to make it responsive to their demands for lower costs and greater value. This truth is universal: Whoever controls the money controls the choices.
Medicare, prescription drugs, and HSAs. The Galen Institute advised the White House and members of Congress in creating the Medicare Modernization Act that gave seniors the opportunity to get better benefits through private Medicare Advantage plans and coverage for prescription drugs through the Medicare Part D program. It also gave millions of Americans the opportunity to gain greater control over their health spending through Health Savings Accounts.
Health care deregulation
The Galen Institute conducts research on the effects of state and federal regulation on costs, access to coverage, consumer choice, and innovation in medicine and insurance coverage. Our research shows that health insurance costs rise under the burden of increased federal and state regulation. This makes health coverage even harder for individuals to afford and drives up the number of uninsured. Lifting regulatory and legal burdens is crucial to the evolution of a more vital, consumer-driven market in the health sector.
2. Coalition Building
We bring a unique approach to public policy research, serving as a broker of ideas for the top experts in the market-based policy community. The Galen Institute plays a critical role in leveraging the expertise of health policy experts at the federal and local levels.
We coordinate and facilitate the work of the Health Policy Consensus Group — a non-partisan task force of leading health care economists, health policy analysts, and researchers primarily from the major market-oriented think tanks.
The Consensus Group presents an opportunity for top health policy analysts to reason together and speak with a unified voice on health care reform.
The Galen Institute produced a peer-reviewed book, Empowering Health Care Consumers through Tax Reform, with chapters on a market-driven system written by members of the Consensus Group.
As a result of these and many other activities, this group has injected free-market ideas into the federal health policy debate.
We also work actively with the states and with state-based research organizations to distribute our research and help them to develop policy proposals to address their individual challenges.
3. Communications & Outreach
Galen’s research is distributed to the public, the media, and policymakers through virtually every communications channel we can muster. We organize conferences, testify before Congress, organize briefings for government officials and candidates, conduct media interviews, and speak frequently at conferences around the United States and the world. Some of our specific products include:
Galen newsletters. Our regular email alerts provide up-to-the-minute commentary on health policy events, distribute news articles and writings from policy experts, and present announcements of upcoming events. Our growing list of thousands of subscribers includes members of Congress and their staffs, administration officials, health care reporters, health policy experts and academics around the country, physicians, state-based think tanks, and many others in and outside the health care field.
Books, papers, commentary articles. Our commentary articles are published in major newspapers around the country, including the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Houston Chronicle, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, and the San Diego Union-Tribune. Our articles also have been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, and we are quoted regularly in newspapers and news magazines across the country.