Oral

Stemming double-digit growth in health care costs is an urgent policy challenge. Present trends are unsustainable. Views differ on whether cost control is prerequisite to universal coverage or vice versa. Some seek to control spending by limiting program funding and shifting burdens to patients. Public-health oriented analysts try to identify basic drivers of costs, considering how these might be controlled consistent with protecting and enhancing population health. In this session, two health system analysts, both concerned with strategies for influencing key cost drivers, attack the problem with distinct differences of focus.

Session Objectives: List and discuss the chief cost drivers in health care and coverage, and their relative importance; Identify and discuss critically some proposed strategies for controlling these drivers; Discuss the efficacy and limitations of regulatory approaches; Discuss the efficacy and limitations of incentives; Discuss the efficacy and limitations of system structural reform approaches; Discuss the efficacy and limitations of market-focused approaches; Discuss the impact of strategies that shift costs to beneficiaries; Discuss (a) what opportunities for reform are likely to occur soonest and (b) some of the underlying factors.

CE Credits: CME, Health Education (CHES), Nursing