The US health care system is the most expensive in the world, yet lags behind those of other high-income countries on benchmarks of quality and access. Increasingly, American health care systems and governments are moving towards more personalized, preventive, and predictive delivery models while looking for solutions to address the rising cost of care. Factors like technology, biomedical innovation, and payment reform are shaping major paradigms shifts in health care delivery today. This course will be a broad survey of some of the most pressing and relevant movements happening in health care delivery reform. We begin the semester with an overview of the US health care system and then describe developing solutions to issues like chronic disease burden, the opioid epidemic, and misaligned financial incentives for providers and payers. At the end of the semester, we will analyze the health care industry through a policy lens, mapping out the political landscape of health care and understanding how ideas become legal reality.
Trinity College of Arts & Sciences