An expert on international health policy and the economics of U.S. health care, Bob Kocher joined the Obama administration earlier this year as a member of the National Economic Council.
As a member of the president’s health-care economics and policy brain trust, Kocher is on the front lines of the administration’s efforts to shape and enact health care reform.
Current Position: National Economic Council, Special Assistant to the President for Health Care (since January 2009)
Bosses: The president, NEC Director Lawrence H. Summers, NEC Deputy Director Diana Farrell, NEC Deputy Director Jason Furman.
(Photo courtesy of Bob Kocher)
Kocher is a former partner at the Washington-based international consulting firm McKinsey & Co., where he led research efforts to determine causes of high U.S. health-care costs for the McKinsey Global Institute, the firm’s economic research department.
In his current role, Kocher is charged with finding ways to reform the U.S. health system by slowing cost increases and improving clinical outcomes. He also advises the president on rural economic policy, food safety and obesity.
Kocher attended the University of Washington, where he earned bachelor’s degrees in political science and zoology. He then earned his M.D. from George Washington University while also completing a research scholarship with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the National Institutes of Health. He completed his residency training at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School.
Kocher joined McKinsey & Co. in 2002. While with the firm, he worked in 18 countries, including Canada, India and the U.K., “to develop health care reform strategies, create aligned economic incentives and improve health care outcomes.”
Kocher led the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) research effort to determine the sources of high U.S. health-care costs.
Using that research as a basis, Kocher co-authored a widely-published report that concluded the U.S spends $650 billion more on health care “than might be expected given the country’s wealth and the experience of comparable members of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.” The OECD is composed of 30 high-income countries that believe in free-market economic principles.
The MGI report pointed to costs associated with outpatient care, emergency-room visits and same-day hospital visits as the largest contributors to the $650 billion in additional expenditures.
In particular, the cost of tests performed during office visits and patient visits to specialists accounted for a substantial chunk of the additional spending. The discrepancy in the cost of prescription drugs in the U.S. compared with other countries also played a significant role.
While with McKinsey & Co., Kocher was co-author of a 2006 report titled “A Framework to Guide Health Care System Reform.”
The report outlines seven “key principles” for use in the formulation of reform measures. Those principles focus on prevention, more fiscally responsible health care decision making on the part of consumers, and promoting cost competitiveness among health care .
Patients, the report says, are “insulated from the final cost [of health services] by multiple administrative layers” and so have “little incentive to choose value for money.” Supplying patients with more information would lead them to make more economically beneficial health-care choices, the report argues.
Additionally, the report focuses on achieving “sustainable costs,” which could be created by partially adopting best practices in an effort to standardize the level of care from one facility to another, especially in terms of medical testing.
“Although process innovations offer the potential for improved productivity, they are often opposed by those who have a financial stake in maintaining the status quo,” the report says, calling on health-care system leaders to “eliminate barriers that exist simply to protect incumbent stakeholders.”
Kocher followed his former colleague, Diana Farrell, from McKinsey & Co. to the National Economic Council in January 2009. Farrell, along with Kocher, is listed as a co-author of the MGI report “A Framework to Guide Health Care System Reform” and is a deputy director of the NEC.