Register by October 13 to secure your spot. 

Lunch will be available for in-person attendees who have RSVP’d in advance at 11:30 a.m. The lecture begins at noon, followed by a Q&A session. 

About the Speaker

This year's lecture, “The Wrong Paradigm: Health Policy's Pursuit of Cost Containment and the Corporatization of Clinical Practice,” is presented by Hayden Rooke-Ley, J.D. Hayden Rooke-Ley, J.D., is an Assistant Professor at the Brown University School of Public Health and the Associate Director of the Health Law & Policy Lab. His research focuses on corporate consolidation and financialization in health care, Medicare and Medicaid financing, and labor and workforce issues in the health sector. He has published in leading medical and law journals and advises policymakers, enforcement agencies, and other health care stakeholders. He is also a practicing attorney, a senior fellow at the American Economic Liberties project, and a member of the Oregon Health Policy Board. He earned his J.D. from Stanford Law School and clerked in U.S. federal district court.

Session Abstract

Health policy underwent a fundamental shift in the 1980s. Amid rising health care inflation and a backlash to the New Deal economic order, reformers turned to market-oriented thinking even as the government’s role in financing health care continued to grow. The result was a range of now-familiar forms of private rationing imposed on patients and clinicians: prior authorizations, narrow provider networks, high deductibles, value-based payment, and corporate consolidation. This paradigm has not merely failed to achieve its central goal of systemwide cost containment; it has fueled the corporatization of medical practice and undermined professional and other pro-social motivations of clinicians—particularly in primary care. A better approach to managing costs and allocating resources is possible, but it presents a different policy challenge: how to exercise muscular and democratically accountable public power at a time of increasing authoritarianism in the United States.    

Learning Objectives

• Explain the predominant approach to health policy and financing over the last 50 years.
• Identify how this paradigm has shaped the practice of primary care and undermined professionalism and other pro-social motivations of clinicians.
• Discuss an alternative framework for health policy, specific reform ideas, and the political challenges of this agenda.