The Atlantic Live Event: How CBO Scoring Can Help Everyone’s Health
Panel Wrestles With Rethinking Smarter Health Care Investments via CBO Scoring
05.03.13 | By
Changes to Congressional Budget Office (CBO) scoring methodology always inspire a ripe discussion of policy. Just consider the major development from November when CBO announced a change to its scoring methodology that recognizes the positive impact prescription medicines have on reducing other health care spending. Yesterday’s Atlantic panel took a closer look at CBO scoring and how it can help overall healthcare spending, and ended up with some pretty interesting gems. Panelists Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former Director of the CBO and Dr. Kenneth E. Thorpe, Professor and Chair of the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, sat down with moderator Steve Clemons, theAtlantic’s Editor-at-Large to explain the scoring in greater detail, and debate its future.
The panel took a real-life look at CBO methodology and discussed in detail the effects of chronic disease costs on the broader health care cost curve. Highlights of the discussion include the effects of health reform efforts on CBO scoring, an examination of how care-coordination effectively cuts costs, and how, as I mentioned previously, better use of prescription medicine can offset costs. They also focused on what sort of large scale policy measures could improve clinical outcomes while slowing the growth of chronic disease, and much more.
I missed the event but, if you want to hear it in full, The Atlantic has posted the discussion here.