November 12, 2025
Working Together to Safeguard the Commonwealth’s Commitment to Health Care Affordability, Access, and Equity
The Massachusetts Health Policy Commission (HPC) holds the Health Care Cost Trends Hearing each year to examine the drivers of health care costs and consider the challenges and opportunities for improving the Massachusetts health care system.
The 2025 Health Care Cost Trends Hearing offers a critical opportunity to discuss the pressing issues challenging the stability and sustainability of the Commonwealth’s health care system. These include barriers to affordability, workforce constraints, financial volatility, high and rising prescription drug costs, and threats to health care access and coverage – and the ongoing efforts to address them.
Recent federal action has created uncertainties about the health care landscape in Massachusetts. It will require a renewed commitment among stakeholders and policymakers to work together towards a health care system that is more affordable, accessible, and equitable for all residents. The 2025 Health Care Cost Trends Hearing will convene industry leaders, clinicians, and community members to reflect on recent policy actions and invite further collaborative action in Massachusetts, advancing the Commonwealth’s health care goals and values.
Amid the federal activity, Massachusetts is still contending with existing affordability hardships facing the Commonwealth’s residents. Massachusetts now has the highest family health insurance premiums in the country. In 2024, the average annual cost of health care for a family exceeded $31,000 (including out of pocket spending). As health care spending grows as a portion of household income, more and more families incur medical debt and avoid using needed care. These rates become particularly dire when health care premiums and out of pocket spending reach 25% of total income – a reality for 41% of Hispanic families and 26% of black families in Massachusetts faced in 2023 compared to 9% of white families. Furthermore, the average annual cost sharing per person grew from $849 in 2019 to $1,049 in 2023 (a 29% increase) and residents paying $5,000 or more annually in cost sharing doubled from 2019 (1.5%) to 2023 (3.1%).
Materials
Agenda
Program Book
2025 Pre-Filed Testimony Summary
Full Presentation
State and Federal Policy Landscape: Impacts on Health Care in Massachusetts
Health Care Cost Trends in Massachusetts and the Imperative to Advance Affordability
HPC Shorts Episode 8: Hospital at Home in Massachusetts
Notice of Public Hearing
Testimony
Each year, the HPC calls for written pre-filed testimony to inform the hearing. The pre-filed testimony affords the HPC and the Office of the Attorney General (AGO), on behalf of the public, an opportunity to engage with a broad range of Massachusetts health care market participants.
This is the first hearing since the enactment of historic health care legislation earlier this year (Chapters 342 and 343 of the Acts of 2024), which strengthens the health care market, addresses rising prescription drug costs, and enhances the public transparency and accountability of the Commonwealth’s health care system – including requiring additional health care market participants to provide public testimony.
Pre-filed testimony is now required from pharmaceutical manufacturers, pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), significant equity investors, real estate investment trusts (REITs), and management services organizations (MSOs), in addition to health care providers, hospitals, and payers.
All written testimony is a public record and is posted online as received.
Location
Suffolk University Law School
120 Tremont Street, Boston