This piece is the first in a series exploring the foundational players in the U.S. healthcare system: payers, providers, policymakers, and the pharmaceutical industry.

Ever since Bill and Hillary Clinton advanced healthcare reform in the first term of the Clinton administration, the debate about how to improve access and affordability has been politically fraught and full of pejoratives. Everyone comes to the table with opinions and preconceived notions, many of which go unchallenged.

In my classroom, I encourage my business school students to look beyond headlines, rhetoric, and reductive soundbites. Tropes like "All that insurance companies care about is profits" and "Doctors don't understand business" are simplistic and do a disservice to patients trying to navigate a profoundly compl

See Full Page