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November 1, 2021 – Health Care

USC Schaeffer Center launches Healthcare Markets Initiative to improve value and efficiency in healthcare

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It has been estimated that upwards of 30 percent of U.S. healthcare spending is on care or services that is inappropriate or wasteful while at the same time many patients don’t get access to the care they need.   

Over the last 12 years, the University of Southern California’s Leonard D. Schaeffer Center for Health Policy & Economics has grown into one of the nation’s premier institutions for developing evidence-based health policy solutions.

Leveraging $1.5 million in support from the Charles Koch Foundation (CKF), the Schaeffer Center will launch the Healthcare Markets Initiative (HMI), a research program aimed at exploring novel ways to redesign healthcare markets to improve value and efficiency in healthcare.

The Schaeffer Center focuses on the major healthcare challenges facing this country — access, quality, and cost. Ultimately its goal is to improve health and the healthcare system through developing ways to increase value, expand access and ensure affordability. Schaeffer Center Fellows inform lawmakers, the media, and private-sector leaders about the country’s most pressing healthcare challenges and offer solutions.

“Healthcare markets represent powerful forces for innovation and health improvement.  Too often, markets have been distorted by bad public policy and regulation,” said Darius Lakdawalla, director of research at the USC Schaeffer Center. “HMI aims to improve the way markets function in healthcare and unlock their attendant benefits for patients, both today and tomorrow.”

Through groundbreaking research, HMI scholars and students will explore important questions including how to encourage valuable innovation to treat chronic disease and how to make health insurance markets work more efficiently. HMI also will convene healthcare practitioners and experts from government to advance solutions that will result in better care for more Americans. 

“We are excited to support the Schaeffer Center, which is challenging the status-quo and driving the innovation that will improve healthcare delivery and access,” said CKF Executive Director Ryan Stowers. “We envision a society where doctors and nurses are empowered to provide patients with the care they deserve. The Healthcare Markets Initiative will help develop new solutions that allow people to live longer, healthier, and more fulfilled lives.”

The Charles Koch Foundation supports research into how to expand access to health care, improve affordability, and provide for better health. Learn more about our health care partnerships.