Events/Calendar/Media

2006
Eighth Annual SIH/SIU Health Policy Institute
Consumer-Driven Health Care: Legal and Policy Implications (May 19, 2006)

Consumer-Driven Health Care: Legal and Policy Implications
Over the past half century, fee-for-service medicine, comprehensive health planning, and managed care each have failed to provide the American public with fair and convenient access to high quality, affordable health care. A new approach to health care financing—consumer-driven health care—encourages consumers to act as prudent, value-conscious purchasers of health services, rather than relying on government, employers, insurers, or managed care organizations to make purchasing decisions for them. Under consumer-driven health care, incentives for individual responsibility for controlling health care costs is provided by a combination of relatively low-premium, high-deductible insurance coupled with the creation of Health Savings Accounts to protect against catastrophic expenses. While this approach shows great promise, it also holds substantial risk. Join us as leading national experts explicate the concept of consumer-driven health care and the likely legal, ethical, financial, and social consequences of implementing the concept on a widespread basis.

Program objectives

At the conclusion of this program, participants will be able to:
1. Identify the historical context and main components of the concept of consumer-driven
health care.
2. Critically evaluate the social and political arguments in favor of and opposed to widespread development and dissemination of consumer-driven health plans.
3. Understand the likely legal and ethical ramifications of widespread adoption of consumer-driven health care.
4. Compare the virtues and flaws of consumer-driven health care to those of possible future alternative approaches to health care financing in the United States.

Speakers:

Sara R. Collins, Ph.D., Senior Program Officer, Future of Health Insurance
The Commonwealth Fund, New York, New York

Presentation: The Health and Financial Implications of Consumer-Driven Health Plans

Sara R. Collins, Ph.D., Senior Program Officer, Future of Health Insurance
The Commonwealth Fund, New York, New York
As the senior program officer for the Program on the Future of Health Insurance at The Commonwealth Fund, Collins is an economist whose responsibilities include survey development, research and policy analysis, and program development and management. Before joining the Fund, she was as an associate director/senior research associate at the New York Academy of Medicine, Division of Health and Science Policy; an associate editor at U.S. News & World Report where she wrote articles on economics and health care; and a senior health policy analyst in the New York City Office of the Public Advocate.

The Health and Financial Implications of Consumer-Driven Health Plans
Presented by Sara R. Collins, Ph.D.
Consumer-driven health plans have gained currency among employers as a strategy to reduce premiums and promote cost-conscious health behavior on the part of employees. What effect do these plans have on the use of health care services and out-of-pocket costs? Data from the EBRI/Commonwealth Fund Consumerism in Health Care Survey, 2005 and the Commonwealth Fund Biennial Health Insurance Survey of 2005 will help us examine the proliferation and implications of these plans.

John C. Goodman, Ph.D., President and CEO
National Center for Policy Analysis, Dallas, Texas

Presentation: Consumer-Driven Health Care: Opportunities and Obstacles

John C. Goodman, Ph.D., President and CEO
National Center for Policy Analysis, Dallas, Texas
Goodman is the president and founder of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a nonprofit nonpartisan research organization dedicated to providing private-sector solutions to public policy problems. He is the author of eight books including the landmark Patient Power: Solving America’s Health Care Crisis, Lives at Risk, and Economics of Public Policy. Tagged the “Father of Health Savings Accounts” by the National Journal and The Wall Street Journal for his pioneering research in consumer-driven health care, his articles also have been published in USA Today, Investor’s Business Daily, and the Los Angeles Times. He has appeared on C-Span, CNNfn, MSNBC, CNBC, the News Hour with Jim Lehrer and the Fox News Channel.

Consumer-Driven Health Care: Opportunities and Obstacles
Presented by John C. Goodman, Ph.D.
Virtually every problem in our health care system is the direct consequence of the way we pay for care, especially the way we pay doctors. These systemic problems will not be solved unless we establish a radically new payment approach. We will discuss the advantages of Health Savings Accounts and the future of health care financing.

Regina E. Herzlinger, Ph.D., Nancy R. McPherson Professor of Business Administration Chair
Harvard Business School

Presentation: Consumer-Driven Health Care: The Impact on Users, Payers, and Providers

Regina E. Herzlinger, Ph.D., Nancy R. McPherson Professor of Business Administration Chair
Herzlinger, the Nancy R. McPherson Professor of Business Administration Chair at the Harvard Business School, was the first woman to be tenured and chaired at the School. The two-time Hamilton Book of the Year award-winner is the author of Effective Oversight: The Four by Four Report: A Practical Guide for Nonprofit Managers and Board Members, Consumer-Driven Health Care, Financial Accounting and Management Control of Nonprofit Organizations, and the best-selling Market-Driven Health Care. Her research has been profiled in Business Week, The Economist, Forbes, and Fortune and has been recognized for excellence by the American College of Healthcare Executives. Managed Healthcare named her one of health care's top ten thinkers.

Consumer-Driven Health Care: The Impact on Users, Payers, and Providers
Presented by Regina E. Herzlinger, Ph.D., Keynote Speaker
The largest service industry in the United States is undergoing a massive transformation that will release both providers and consumers from the strictures of managed care. How will this transformation affect users, payers, and providers of health care?

Arnold J. Rosoff, J.D., Professor of Legal Studies
Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

Presentation: Consumer-Driven Health Care: Assessing the Bottom Line

Arnold J. Rosoff, J.D., Professor of Legal Studies
Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Rosoff is a professor of Legal Studies and Health Care Systems at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, a Senior Fellow with the university’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, and a faculty member in the Penn Medical School’s Public Health Program. He has consulted for numerous private and governmental entities on health law matters, with an emphasis on HMOs and other prepaid health and dental plans. He is deputy editor of the Journal of Legal Medicine, a Fellow of the American College of Legal Medicine, and a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics.

Consumer-Driven Health Care: Assessing the Bottom Line
Presented by Arnold J. Rosoff, J.D.
After hearing the hype and the testimonials, the potentials and the pitfalls, what conclusions can we draw about consumer-driven health care plans? Will they cure our nation’s woes? We will assess the impact of consumers taking responsibility for their health care plans, identify the potential winners and losers in the drive to streamline our health care system, and discuss what conditions must be present for the benefits of consumer-driven health care to be realized and sustained.

Todd Sloane
Modern Healthcare magazine, Chicago

Presentation: Consumer Driven, But Nobody Has the Rules of the Road

Todd
Sloane

Todd Sloane
Modern Healthcare magazine, Chicago
Sloane is the assistant managing editor of Modern Healthcare magazine, the country's leading healthcare business news weekly. He has been the copy desk chief for Modern Healthcare, the managing news editor for City & State, the managing and political editors for the Pioneer Press, and an adjunct professor of government journalism at Columbia College, Chicago The recipient of the 2005 Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award and two Peter Lisagor Awards from the Chicago Headline Club, Sloane is also the author of a Gonzalez of Texas: A Congressman of the People, a biography of the late Texas congressman Henry B. Gonzalez.

Consumer Driven, But Nobody Has the Rules of the Road
Presented by Todd Sloane
We will take a look at real world problems in giving consumers the information they need to make rational choices of providers and treatment options under new forms of health insurance.