A strong move toward payer-provider collaboration is needed to alleviate animosities that sow widespread confusion around payment across the nation’s healthcare system. The health system had terminated its managed care contracts with the payer when negotiations over reimbursement rates that failed to keep up with expenses came to an impasse. After an intense media campaign, legal action and a strategy backed by data, the organizations finally reached an agreement. Despite that experience, even Mounts is surprised by the degree to which she says payers have, in recent years, been unsympathetic about the cost pressures hospitals and health systems face, particularly following the pandemic. Mounts once got into an argument with a payer executive who said inflation was getting better at a time when inflation clearly was not. “When I would point to any number of sources, including our own internal data and financial statements, to show them the increases in expenses that we were exper...