Salus Health Care Forum: November 5, 2025

The fifteenth Salus Health Care Forum, and first in the second series of forums was convened on November 5, 2025. In attendance were Mitch Applegate, William Bergquist, Jeremy Fish, Bill Gillanders, Craig McEwen, Gay Teurman, Mark Vukalcic, and Jack Westfall. The Trigger topic for this forum was provided by Dr. Fish, who summarized findings and recommendations from a recent NASEM report.  Observations and suggestions arising from this report reflect some of the dominant perspectives offered by those now working in the field of health care . . .

Following is a narrative based on the recorded forum.

Jeremy

The trigger topic today concerns the valuing of America’s health. I focus on a NASEM report that came out in late 2024. The subtitle is Aligning Financing to Reward Better Health and Wellbeing. It parallels the mission-level discussions we’ve had here.

In the Salus forum, we’ve had a lot of strategic conversations. So this is what I would call a strategic document coming from a highly regarded national group of experts who sat down. And it begins by depicting what’s wrong with healthcare, which I think we’ve all gotten pretty familiar with, but I’m just going to put a sentence together here that ties together many of the comments that they had in what I would call the situation and background of this issue.

We have declining life expectancy. We have rising maternal and infant mortality. We have declining access and investment in primary healthcare and mental health, and behavioral health. We are experiencing upwards of $1 trillion in low-value waste spending, for which we’ve made zero progress in reducing. Despite that, we have been reducing investment in the highest value area of healthcare, which is primary healthcare. So how we’ve managed to do that, I think, is part of the challenge that we’ve faced.