Senate Health Committee Announces Series of Hearings on How to Reduce Health Care Costs
First hearing scheduled for June 27
WASHINGTON, June 14, 2018 — Senate health committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) today announced the committee will hold a series of hearings this year to explore how to reduce health care costs in America:
“The United States has the most innovative health care system in the world, but it is also the most complex, and too often Americans struggle to understand the system and plan for and afford their health care,” Alexander said. “These hearings will explore why Americans spend so much on health care and how to reduce those costs.”
The first hearing titled “How to Reduce Health Care Costs: Understanding the Cost of Health Care in America,” is scheduled for Wednesday, June 27th at 10:00am ET and will be an opportunity for members of the committee to develop a common understanding of health care spending in our country: who is spending the money; what it is being spent on; when in a person’s life do they spend the most; and into which sectors does the money go.
Witnesses:
- Melinda Buntin, Ph.D, Mike Curb Professor and Chair, Department of Health Policy, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, TN
- Ashish Jha, M.D., MPH, Director, Harvard Global Health Institute, K. T. Li Professor and Senior Associate Dean, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Professor of Medicine, Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA
- Niall Brennan, MPP, President and Executive Director, Health Care Cost Institute, Washington, DC
- Dave Hyman, M.D., JD, Professor, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, DC
The second hearing of the series will be announced at a later date.
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