Health Policy Commons is a safe table, where left and right, public and private, policy maker and CEO can come together.

It’s a place where smart people engage in thoughtful conversations – because the challenges we face in health care require more conversations, not fewer.

That’s the vision for the Commons today.

But, it was also our vision back in 2010.

At that time, at the passage of the Affordable Care Act, we created a news outlet and conference series for senior health care executives and health policy leaders. That initiative was focused on the energy of health reform. It grew to 20 conferences held in 13 states, and a newsletter subscriber base of 240,000 readers.

In 2021, we sold that enterprise to a partner organization. We stepped back from gathering leaders and focused all of our energies on our kids. Coming out of COVID, our children needed a little extra attention. So, we chauffeured our kids and coached their teams. We volunteered in the classroom, took them on road trips and watched their performances. We were deep in their business!

We were lucky to have some time with them, because now that they are teenagers, they barely want to talk to us!

So, we decided that perhaps it made sense to re-create the same safe table for policy and market leaders that we created previously.

We talked with governors and CEOs, with legislators and lobbyists, health plan leaders and care givers. Their answer was a resounding affirmation:

“We need a place where we can have real conversations that build bridges, not walls.”

That’s where Health Policy Commons comes in.

The Commons is a nonpartisan, multi-silo, policy agnostic newsletter and conference series that tees up some of the most compelling conversations in health policy today.

When we tried this before back in 2010, no one was used to paying for content. So, as the events grew, the success of the conferences could support the quality of the content. The content was free as a public service.

Today, everyone is used to paying for digital content. It’s the state-level events that have become too expensive to host. So, we’re hoping to develop our reporting enough that it will generate enough revenue to pay for the conferences – something still valuable in a post-COVID world of polarization, AI, and economic disruption.

That’s basically our story. We’re trying to create a space where the social capital needed for solutions can be fostered. And we’re trying to support that by building out a content model that is worth more than you pay for it.

We’d love to have you along for the ride.