The New Health Dialogue

This coming Wednesday, March 9, the New America Foundation Health Policy Program is co-sponsoring "The Health Care Cost Summit" with America's Health Insurance Plans (AHIP).

Economists, policy makers and budget experts have warned for decades that health care costs are the nation’s most urgent fiscal problem. Unfortunately, while agreement on the problem is easy, bi-partisan solutions have been much more elusive. In fact, the President’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform recognizes the problem of unsustainable increases in health care costs and the challenges these increases cause for the entire nation and calls for aggressive action. The sustainability of the nation’s fiscal house, and more specifically the country’s health care system, will require bold steps to achieve system-wide cost containment.

This Summit will link health care, health insurance, economists, and budget policy experts in a discussion of the politics of cost containment and ways to address the problem of ever increasing health care costs.

Join health insurance plan leaders as well as business, health policy, economists, and political thought leaders at the Health Care Cost Summit, March 9, 2011, to discuss solutions that will enable the nation to build a sustainable, high quality health care system.

The event will take place at the Westin - Georgetown Hotel (2350 M St. NW) from 11:00am to 6:00pm, and features some excellent speakers.  Fellow New American Maya MacGuineas will moderate a panel on the budgetary imperative for reducing health costs, and former New America Health Policy Director Len Nichols will discuss realigning incentives to promote high quality/low cost care.  Also of note, Paul Ginsburg, the President of the Center Studying Health System Change, will lead a panel about how innovative health care contracting must be part of the solution.