On August 20, 2020, Common Good held the fourth forum of the Campaign for Common Good to explore the bloated healthcare bureaucracy. Unnecessary complexity is the original sin of the American healthcare system. The system is a bureaucratic tangle that lets millions of Americans fall through the cracks, distorts incentives by providers, payers, and patients, and is grotesquely inefficient. No one designed the current system; it is a hodgepodge of programs and attempted fixes that no longer serves the common good. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the weaknesses of a disjointed regulatory and payment framework while revealing the dedication of healthcare professionals within it.

Panelists

Shari M. Erickson, MPH
Vice President, Governmental Affairs and Medical Practice, American College of Physicians

Sandeep Jauhar, MD, PhD
Director, Heart Failure Program, Long Island Jewish Medical Center; author; contributing opinion writer, The New York Times

Vivian Lee, MD, PhD, MBA
President of Health Platforms at Verily Life Sciences; Author of The Long Fix: Solving America’s Health Care Crisis with Strategies that Work for Everyone (W. W. Norton, 2020)

Mark McClellan, MD, PhD
Robert J. Margolis Professor of Business, Medicine, and Health Policy, and Founding Director, Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy, Duke University; Former Administrator, U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services; Former Commissioner, U.S. Food and Drug Administration

Ashley Thompson
Senior Vice President, Public Policy Analysis and Development, American Hospital Association

Philip K. Howard
(Moderator) Chair, Common Good