Background

All people should have the information and tools they need to choose safe, high-quality, and affordable health care. While most agree on the importance of helping consumers to be informed and active in their own health care, the term “consumerism” often evokes strong differences of opinion and causes people to jump into one political camp or another. In some cases, consumerism is equated with an overemphasis on cost management or unfair shifting of responsibility. Others associate it with empowerment and shared involvement in the medical decisionmaking process. Assigning “red” or “blue” political labels to consumerism not only discourages open dialogue—which is, in itself, counter to the transparency and sharing of information that is needed to enable consumer choice—but also limits opportunities to support consumers in making the best health care decisions. In reality, the underlying objectives for engaging consumers in their own health care are neither conservative nor liberal. When safety, quality, and cost metrics are widely available, all consumers benefit: rich or poor, old or young, city dweller or rural resident.

Objectives

This event’s main objective is to broaden the discourse about consumer choice in health care and disentangle consumerism from political persuasions. This will be achieved by:

• Sharing realities that pertain to all health care consumers when they are making medical decisions;
  
  
• Discussing lessons learned about what’s working (and what’s not) to engage consumers in health care decisions;
  
  
• Offering strategies to equip consumers with useful data and tools and help them to evaluate treatment options, safety, quality, and price; and
  
  
• Identifying barriers and actionable solutions to promote consumer choice in health care.