Financing U.S. health care to invest in the future

Among the many lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, one thing is clear: Whether it’s gaps in our public health system or obstacles to adoption of telemedicine, the way we finance health care in the U.S. doesn’t always match what we want from health care. Rebecca Etz, PhD, a cultural anthropologist with Virginia Commonwealth University and a leading expert on integrating mental and behavioral health into primary care practice, joins the Inside Angle podcast to discuss how outdated health care finance policies don’t necessarily help people be well, prevent disease or avoid a hospital stay.

"...a lot of primary care is about upstream causes to health harms. It's not the immediate broken arm and repair. It's about paying attention to lifestyle and health behaviors and mental wellbeing and physical wellbeing, and knowing that attention to these things early on can prevent disease and disease burden later on. Right? So we need a finance system that isn't focused on just the present but allows us to invest in the future."
— Rebecca S. Etz, PhD, Associate Professor of Family Medicine and Population Health at Virginia Commonwealth University, and Co-Director, Larry A. Green Center