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Past Event

An Economic Studies Event

Our Looming Medical Cost Catastrophe: What’s to be Done?

Health Care, Medicaid, Medicare, Federal Budget

Event Summary

Uncontrolled medical spending has risen to the top of the national agenda and become a fiercely-contested election year issue. This conference, co-sponsored by Brookings and the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University, will consider why past efforts to contain costs have failed and how America might achieve cost-sensitive health care reform in the future. Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle will offer opening remarks on how to achieve change in today’s political climate. Congressional Budget Office Director Peter Orszag, will deliver the luncheon address. The conference panelists, who include many of the nation’s top experts on health policy, come from a variety of disciplines and political perspectives. The speakers will take audience questions.

Event Information

When

Friday, March 07, 2008
8:30 AM to 4:15 PM

Where

Falk Auditorium
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC
Map

Contact: Brookings Office of Communications

E-mail: events@brookings.edu

Phone: 202.797.6105

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At the end of this year, The Brookings Institution Press will publish a volume, edited by Gregg Bloche and Leslie Meltzer, entitled Beyond Learned Helplessness: Solving America’s Health Care Cost Conundrum. The volume will contain contributions from the conference speakers and from others.

Transcript

GREGG BLOCHE:  We gathered here today because of the remarkable and growing ability of our medical technologies to improve and prolong our lives, but this also poses an amounting threat to our capacity to pursue other aims. You all know the numbers. Health spending is projected to rise to 25 percent of GDP a decade and a half or so from now, and to 50 percent of GDP later in the latter part of this century.

This is, of course, unsustainable. Somehow push is going to come to shove. Controlling medical costs would be simple were we not passionately convinced that we get something profoundly important in exchange for what we spend on health care.We could just stop spending and do something else with our $2.1 trillion a year. We're gathered here today to try to preserve the immense value that we gain from health care, while moving our country toward a medical spending track that's financially sustainable.

Participants

Welcome and Introduction

Gregg Bloche

Director of the Center on Health Care Financing and Organization, O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University

Leslie Meltzer

Greenwall Fellow in Bioethics and Health Policy, Georgetown University Law Center; Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics

Vehicles for Health Reform: How to Get Big Change in Today's Political Climate

Tom Daschle

Special Policy Advisor, Alston & Bird LLP; former Senate Majority Leader

The History of Health Care Cost Containment: Past Failures and Lessons Learned

Timothy Jost

Professor of Law, Washington and Lee University

Panel I: Social Stewardship versus Fidelity to Patients? Ethical and Legal Dilemmas

Daniel Wikler

Professor of Population Ethics, Harvard University School of Public Health

Leslie Meltzer

Greenwall Fellow in Bioethics and Health Policy, Georgetown University Law Center; Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics

William Sage

Vice Provost for Health Affairs and Professor of Law, University of Texas

Health Care Costs, Quality, and the Federal Budget

Peter Orszag

Director of the Congressional Budget Office

Panel II: Seeking Value and Setting Limits

Jonathan Skinner

Professor of Economics and Community and Family Medicine, Dartmouth

Dana Goldman

Chair and Director of Health Economics, Finance, and Organization, RAND

Richard Epstein

Professor of Law, University of Chicago

David Hyman

Professor of Law and Medicine, University of Illinois

Bradley Herring

Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health

Panel II: Moderator

Jason Furman

Senior Fellow, Economic Studies

Panel III: “Bending the Curve”: Hard Choices and Hidden Opportunities

Mark Hall

Professor of Law and Public Health, Wake Forest University

Gregg Bloche

Director of the Center on Health Care Financing and Organization, O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University

Sean Tunis

Director, Center for Medical Technology Policy

Jeanne Lambrew

Associate Professor, University of Texas School of Public Affairs

Panel III: Moderator

Patrick Healy

Senior Research Assistant, The Brookings Institution

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