Health Policy and Power in U.S. Healthcare: Who Owns the Outcomes?

(3 Credits)

Why does the United States spend more on healthcare than any country globally yet struggle with access, equity, affordability, and health outcomes—and who is accountable? This course follows health policy across the entire healthcare continuum—from Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance and managed care to primary and specialty care, hospitals, pharmaceuticals, behavioral health, post-acute care, long-term care, and hospice—to examine how policy, federalism, markets, payment, and power created the system we have today. Students will explore who makes the rules, who gets paid, who gets care, and what happens when solving a problem in one part of healthcare creates another somewhere else. The course concludes by asking whether value-based care and other reforms can actually integrate a system that decades of policy helped fragment—and ultimately, who owns the outcome?