Henry J. Aaron

Senior Fellow in Health Care Economics at the Brookings Institution

Henry J. Aaron appears in the following:

Questions and Answers on Health Care Reform

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

The Senate Finance Committee finally approved their version of health care reform legislation yesterday. That’s only the next step in a long sequence aiming to pass just one of the five bills from various committees in Congress. We step back from the legislative process to look at what people want most out of an overhaul of the nation's health care system. We asked for questions from listeners, and this morning we try to get answers with Henry Aaron, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and David Herszenhorn, congressional correspondent for The New York Times.

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Saving Trillions in Health Care, One Patient at a Time

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Yesterday, the Obama administration built momentum for an ambitious plan aimed at reducing the rising cost of health care. The administration announced $2 trillion in voluntary cost reductions over ten years by hospitals, doctors, drug makers, and insurance companies. But will this volunteer plan work? Or will the Obama administration need to regulate the industry with a firmer hand? And where do you, the private citizen, come in when it comes to taking care of yourself and your healthcare? Joining the conversation is Henry J. Aaron, who served as the Assistant Secretary of Planning and Evaluation at the Department of Health, Education and Welfare during the Carter administration. He is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

Also on The Takeaway is Dean Karlan. He's a behavioral economist at Yale and a co-founder of StickK.com, a site that helps you reach personal goals, like being healthier, by giving yourself an incentive. He's here to help explain how change, especially in health care, can actually trickle up from individuals to the national level.
"The question about health care in particular is: What prices do people respond to most on health care and how can you make them more aware of those prices to help them, guide them, toward the choices they want to make themselves?"
—Dean Karlan of Yale University and founder of StickK.com on health care incentives

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