周二，健康保险公司将在“让美国再次健康”（“Make America Healthy Again”）峰会上表示：他们实际上是致力于改善患者健康状况、降低医疗成本的合作伙伴，而非特朗普总统等人所描绘的那些“政治害虫”。
Health insurers on Tuesday will tell a "Make America Healthy Again" summit that they're partners in efforts to make patients healthier and health care more affordable, not the political boogeymen President Trump and others have made them out to be.
这一消息的重要性在于：面对两党对医疗费用上涨的强烈不满，这些保险公司正在努力与那些历来与他们关系紧张的群体建立联系（即那些反对医疗改革的势力）。
Why it matters: Health plans are responding to bipartisan anger over coverage costs by making inroads witha historically hostile crowd.
推动这一消息的主要因素是：联合健康保险公司（UnitedHealth）、Elevance公司以及相关行业协会AHIP的高管们将参加在华盛顿华尔道夫酒店举行的年度会议上，与一位医疗保险部门高级官员进行的小组讨论。
Driving the news: Executives with UnitedHealth, Elevance and the industry trade group AHIP are due to participate in a panel discussion with a top Medicare official at an annual gathering of MAHA faithful at Washington's Waldorf Astoria hotel.
Elevance公司计划宣布新的计费政策，以明确患者接受医疗服务的具体环境，并确保各项服务能够按照正确的费率获得支付。这一举措与联邦政府日益增长的意愿相契合——即无论医疗服务在何处提供，都应支付相同的费用。
Elevance plans to announce new billing policies designed to clarify the setting where patients are receiving care, to ensure that services are paid at the correct rate. The announcement dovetails with growing bipartisan interest by the federal government in paying the same rates for the same services, regardless of where they're performed.
联合健康保险公司则计划强调：保险公司应更加重视预防性医疗和患者的长期健康状况，而不是等到患者生病后才进行治疗。
UnitedHealth plans to highlight how health plans can place more emphasis on preventive care and long-term health, instead of waiting to treat patients when they're sick.
整体形势是：健康保险公司目前面临着来自两党的巨大压力。许多国会候选人承诺要打击那些拥有强大影响力的医疗利益集团，并努力降低医疗费用；他们将保险公司与制药公司一同视为导致医疗费用持续上涨的罪魁祸首。
The big picture: Health insurers are in hot water with both political parties. Congressional candidates have been vowing to take on powerful health interests and make care more affordable, casting insurers alongside pharmaceutical companies as culprits responsible for ever-rising prices. Many in the MAHA movement are deeply skeptical of the health care establishment — and convinced that government regulators have been looking out for the powerful interests.
然而，这些保险公司正试图扭转这一局面，将自己定位为在某些关键议题上的合作伙伴。
But the insurersare trying to flip the script and pitch themselves as allies on some key priorities.
“本次小组讨论的内容旨在展示公众与私营医疗服务提供者之间的共同利益，”一位熟悉活动筹备情况的消息人士表示。
"The content on the panel is designed to show overlapping interest between the public and private payers," one source familiar with the event planning said.
消息人士称，这包括与政府在解决浪费、欺诈和滥用问题上保持一致，以及MAHA运动对“营养、食品以及……[卫生部长小罗伯特·F·肯尼迪]在强调整体健康和超越疾病护理体系方面的领导力”的关注。
That includes alignment with the administration on addressing waste, fraud and abuse and the MAHA movement's focus on "nutrition, food and ... [Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s] leadership on highlighting whole health and moving beyond a sick care system," the source said.
“AHIP欢迎有机会就如何降低慢性病发病率、让美国人更能负担和获得医疗保健展开对话，”发言人克里斯·邦德表示。
"AHIP welcomes opportunities to engage in dialogue about how to reduce the incidence of chronic disease and make health care more affordable and accessible for Americans," said spokesperson Chris Bond.
细节：Elevance的新政策率先与Axios分享，据该公司新闻稿称，这些政策“旨在应对日益常见的情况，即[医院]院外地点提供的医疗服务按更高的医院费率计费”。
Details: Elevance's new policies, shared first with Axios, are "intended to address increasingly common situations where care provided at [a hospital's] off-campus location is billed at a higher hospital rate," according to the company's press release.
这家保险公司将要求医院标明提供医疗服务的实际地点，将账单信息与医院地址进行核对以确认服务发生地，并按适当费率支付某些院外医院服务。
The insurer will require hospitals to identify the physical location where care was provided, check billing information against hospital addresses to confirm where care took place, and pay certain off-campus hospital services at the appropriate rate.
这些政策将适用于Elevance的商业保险、Medicare Advantage和Medicaid计划。
The policies will apply across Elevance's commercial, Medicare Advantage and Medicaid plans.
“当同一项服务因为医院拥有一间医生诊所或门诊而费用更高时，劳动者和家庭就要背负更高的保费和分摊费用，”ERISA行业委员会首席执行官詹姆斯·格尔凡德在一份声明中表示。“这种创新应该成为常态。”他们这么说：“很难真正理解为什么商业保险公司要为完全相同的一项服务在医院而非医生诊所进行支付更高的费用，”布鲁金斯学会卫生政策中心研究员兼副主任洛伦·阿德勒表示。但“我不太明白他们为什么没有更早这样做，”他补充道。
"When the same service costs more because a hospital owns a doctor's office or clinic, workers and families are saddled with higher premiums and cost sharing," said James Gelfand, CEO of the ERISA Industry Committee, in a statement. "This kind of innovation should become the norm." What they're saying: "It's hard to really understand why a commercial insurer should be paying more for the exact same service to be done in a hospital versus a doctor's office," said Loren Adler, a fellow and associate director at the Brookings Institution's Center on Health Policy. But "I don't have a great sense why they didn't do this earlier," he added.
尽管该政策将对价格产生下行影响，阿德勒说，“其幅度不太可能非常大。”言外之意：保险公司出现在MAHA的一场旗舰活动上，并未受到该运动所有成员的欢迎。
Though the policy will have a downward effect on prices, Adler said, "the magnitude is unlikely to be terribly large." Between the lines: Insurers' presence at a tentpole MAHA event hasn't been welcomed by all members of the movement.
罗伯特·马龙（Robert Malone）曾是肯尼迪亲自挑选的疫苗咨询小组成员，他在自己的 Substack 博客上写道，峰会议程中涉及的企业利益相关者名单让他“感到非常震惊”。
Robert Malone, a former member of Kennedy's handpicked vaccine advisory panel, wrote on his Substack that he was "genuinely taken aback" by a who's who of corporate interests on the summit agenda.
“我们都认为 MAHA（Medical Access and Health Accountability）组织的成立目的是为了挑战那些根深蒂固的既得利益，”他写道，“然而这个组织却召集了一个专门讨论医疗可负担性的小组，而实际上这个小组的成员主要由保险行业主导；那些受该医疗体系影响的医生和患者却被完全排除在讨论之外。”他在题为《MAHA 的沦陷》（The Capture of MAHA）的帖子中这样指出。“MAHA 的初衷应该是揭露金钱、企业与政府之间的利益勾结关系，而不是反过来成为这些利益集团的工具，”他补充道。
"We all thought MAHA was founded to challenge entrenched interests," he wrote. It "has somehow convened a panel on medical affordability dominated by the insurance industry itself, while the physicians and patients who live under that system have been completely excluded from the discussion," Malone wrote in a post titled "The Capture of MAHA." "MAHA was supposed to expose the revolving door between money, industry and government, not build its own," he added.
归根结底：如果说与会者中有谁几乎所有人都认同的话，那就是必须正视当前的问题，以阻止‘全民医保’（Medicare for All）计划的推进。
The bottom line: If there's anything almost everyone at the conference can agree, it's the need to confront today's problems to stave off momentum for Medicare for All.
尽管各方在公开言论中表现出强烈的反对立场，但这种保守派与保险公司之间的联盟却可能长期存在下去。
That, if anything, creates an odd-bedfellows alliance between conservatives and insurers that's likely to endure, despite the populist campaign rhetoric.