Price and Profits: Understanding the U.S. Health Care ‘System’
An essential three-webinar course for journalists.
Welcome to AHCJ’s first certification course for health care reporters.
This three-webinar series, supported by the NIHCM Foundation, is AHCJ’s first certification opportunity for early- or mid-career journalists who want to learn or revisit the fundamentals of the U.S. health care “system,” how it works and why it costs so much. Each webinar is roughly an hour long and has an accompanying quiz.
Health care in the United States is a complicated and fragmented system that has not produced good outcomes for the majority of Americans. Understanding how it has become less than the sum of its parts is, arguably, more important than ever for anyone who covers health care.
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“Price and Profit” will take you through:
- The basics of the system’s parts, led by longtime health policy and insurance reporter Joe Burns — AHCJ’s health beat leader for health policy and insurance.
- A deeper dive into the complexities of Medicare, Medicaid and the ACA, led by former AHCJ board president Felice Freyer — formerly of the Boston Globe and now an independent journalist.
- An exploration of what’s driving the upward spiral of costs, making health care less affordable than ever for many Americans, led by Joanne Kenen, journalist-in-residence at Johns Hopkins and a seasoned health policy reporter.
We recommend you watch the webinars chronologically and complete the self-test after each one. When you’ve taken all the quizzes, we’ll send you a certificate of completion. Consider linking to the course page when you cite this accomplishment on your resumé. If you have a question about the content or want guidance about additional resources, email course@healthjournalism.org. Let’s get started!
Part 1: Overview of the U.S. Health Care ‘System’
In Part 1, AHCJ’s Health Beat Leader for Health Policy and Insurance Joe Burns explores the fundamental components of the fragmented U.S. healthcare “system,” its historical origins and the reasons behind its high costs and poor outcomes compared to other nations. Burns also interviews Larry Levitt, KFF’s executive vice president for health policy.
Part II: Medicare, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act
In Part II, independent journalist and former AHCJ President Felice Freyer discusses three major programs — Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — and interviews two experts on the each program’s evolution and challenges. Freyer first speaks with Benjamin Sommers, M.D., Ph.D., the Huntley Quelch Professor of Health Care Economics at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She also talks with Jonathan Gruber, Ph.D., the Ford Professor of Economics and the Chairman of the Economics Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Part III: The Affordability Crisis in U.S. Health Care
In Part III, Johns Hopkins Journalist-in-Residence Joanne Kenen dives into U.S. health care’s affordability crisis: sky-high costs, access barriers and ongoing equity challenges and disparities to name a few. Kenen interviews Zirui Song, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of health care policy and medicine at Harvard Medical School and internal medicine physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, about the affordability challenges faced by Song’s patients and more.
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