Wall Street Comes to Washington health care roundtable

The COVID-19 pandemic has profoundly disrupted American society—especially health care. Despite rapid rollout of safe and effective vaccines, COVID surges and variants have strained the health care delivery system to the breaking point at times. Nearly one million people have died from COVID in the U.S., with more than one in five of those deaths in nursing homes.

At the same time, the pandemic has spurred innovations in care delivery, particularly telehealth and remote patient monitoring. As the nation works toward recovery, health care is bigger business than ever, accounting for nearly a fifth (19.7%) of the overall U.S. economy in 2020, when overall health care spending crossed the $4 trillion threshold for the first time.

On Wednesday, April 13, the USC-Brookings Schaeffer Initiative for Health Policy hosted the 26^th Wall Street Comes to Washington health care roundtable. Designed to bridge the worlds of Wall Street and Washington health policy, an expert panel of equity analysts, moderated by Brookings nonresident senior fellow Paul B. Ginsburg, discussed market trends shaping the health care system and the impact of federal policies on health care companies.

Topics included lessons learned from the pandemic; the growing role of telehealth and other digital health technologies; provider and health plan consolidation trends amid stepped up federal antitrust scrutiny; the shift to alternative/value-based payment; the future of independent physician practice as insurers, hospitals, and private equity firms buy practices; health insurance trends across the commercial, Medicare, and Medicaid lines of business; Wall Street and industry views and expectations of policy changes under the Biden administration; and other issues.

Viewers submitted questions for panelists by emailing events@brookings.edu or via Twitter with #WallStHealthPolicy.