Health Care Leaders Discuss The Future of Health Care in America

Washington, DC – September 3, 2014 - The National Institute for Health Care Management Foundation (NIHCM) today is hosting a panel of top health care leaders with diverse business and policy expertise to share their unique perspectives on the current state of Affordable Care Act (ACA) implementation and offer alternative ideas for the future of the health care in America.

Featured speakers include Marilyn Tavenner, Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services; Joseph Swedish, President and CEO of WellPoint, Inc.; J. Bradley Wilson, President and CEO, Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Carolina; Avik Roy, Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research; and Dr. Uwe E. Reinhardt, James Madison Professor of Political Economy at Princeton University.

“How you view the challenges facing the U.S. health care system depends on where you sit. Dialogue between business and policy leaders is critical to understanding the bigger picture,” said Nancy Chockley, President and CEO of the NIHCM Foundation.

Swedish, President and CEO of WellPoint, said, “We are experiencing an evolution in healthcare. The intersection of health, policy, financing, care delivery, government, consumers and the private sector has never been more challenging and complex. However this complexity brings opportunity—to think and act differently and to rebuild American health care through innovation and collaboration. Changes in health care delivery—consumer engagement, rapidly emerging technology, greater connectivity to health information, and increased provider collaboration have vast potential to save lives and truly transform care for millions of people.” With nearly 69 million people served by its affiliated companies, WellPoint is the nation’s leading health benefits provider serving 37 million—or one in nine—Americans through its affiliated health plans and offers health plans on the exchanges in 14 states.

“In the face of an ever more unequal distribution of income and wealth, our ever more expensive health system has priced its products out of reach of close to half of American families. Therein lies a dilemma, because we suffer from a bad case of cognitive dissonance. With half of our brains we aspire to be the most generous people on earth and thus expect our doctors and hospitals to run a roughly egalitarian health system. Alas, the other half of our brain refuses to pay the taxes to make our noble aspirations feasible,” said Reinhardt, one of the nation’s leading authorities on health care economics and a contributor to “The Upshot” at The New York Times.

About NIHCM

The National Institute for Health Care Management (NIHCM) Foundation is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to improving the health of Americans by spurring workable and creative solutions to pressing health care problems.