Second National Pharmaceutical Council and Health Affairs Forum to Explore Emerging Health Spending Solutions

The National Pharmaceutical Council (NPC), Health Affairs and several Going Below The Surface Forum partners on September 11 are hosting a discussion among health policy experts on emerging solutions to rising U.S. health spending. Titled “Health Spending: Moving from Theory to Action,” this event focuses on strategies to promote cost-effective care and efforts to keep health spending under control.

With health care spending approaching 20 percent of GDP, NPC and Health Affairs, along with Anthem, Inc., last year kicked off efforts to have a sustained, productive and informed dialogue to better understand the drivers of health care spending and to consider potential solutions.

“In the year and a half since our last gathering, we’ve seen continued experimentation and critical research to help us understand – and drive down – health spending,” said NPC President and Chief Executive Officer Dan Leonard. “But we need to go further, and this event should help both define gaps in our knowledge and identify opportunities to collaborate for solutions.”

Featuring keynote presentations from Reed Tuckson, Managing Director at Tuckson Health Connections, and Robin Gelburd, President of FAIR Health, the event will examine current efforts to address health spending, explore what innovative steps states like North Carolina are taking, and consider additional challenges that must be addressed.

Last February, NPC, Health Affairs and Anthem, Inc. partnered to launch the “Considering Health Spending” initiative aimed at promoting discussion about the rate of growth, distribution, and efforts of improvement related to health spending though events, blog posts and peer-reviewed papers.

To begin this dialogue, Health Affairs and NPC hosted a kickoff event with expert panelists to examine how various sectors are responding to increased health spending. The effort also generated a new group, the Council on Health Spending, to promote nonpartisan, evidence-driven approaches to understanding where health care dollars are spent. Today’s event will continue the “Considering Health Spending” initiative to improve understanding of health system and work toward ways to improve quality of care.

Watch the livestream here.