By Katie Dzurec
Director, State Public Policy Outreach
As uncertainty and innovation continue to crisscross the health care landscape, the Health Practice Council (HPC) is taking a back-to-basics approach to its work, developing materials that examine underlying assumptions, explore root causes, and consider both short- and long-term effects of proposals.
The HPC’s priorities for 2026 include strategies aimed at all health coverage markets:
- Advance understanding of strategies to control health care costs and improve the efficiency of health care spending. By focusing on the underlying drivers of health spending—prices, utilization, and the value of care—our work will prioritize addressing the root causes of high, rising, and inefficiently allocated health care costs, while maintaining attention to affordability concerns and issues around premiums.
- Inform policymakers, regulators, and other stakeholders of how existing and potential policy actions may affect market structure and sustainability, consumer access to coverage and care, and interactions among markets. Building on our 2025 health insurance market dynamics resource guide, we’ll continue to provide a broader picture of how policy changes and market forces interact, highlighting connections among the markets and the challenges of achieving balance. These dynamics are central to ongoing policymaker discussions on access, costs, and eligibility.
- Apply an actuarial perspective to emerging and anticipated developments in the health care landscape to help prepare for future policy discussions. With the Academy’s broader public policy mission in mind, we’ll leverage the expertise and experience of our committee members to analyze new proposals and provide perspectives, while creating opportunities to bring different stakeholders together to discuss potential solutions.
Like 2025, this year is shaping up to be both a challenging and exciting year in health policy. We will continue to expand the guide and follow up on our ongoing conversations about premium cost drivers and considerations for states to support market stability. As more states and the federal government take action on the use of prior authorization, HPC committees are examining how policy decisions might affect utilization patterns, trends, and underlying costs.
Work continues on the Broadening the Focus project, which is challenging actuaries and nonactuaries alike to rethink how we measure cost savings while taking a holistic approach to examine what “efficient allocation of health care dollars” could include. Plan to join us on April 16 in Washington, D.C.—registration will open soon, and we’ll continue to update the webpage with details on the agenda. To learn more about other HPC’s activities, visit the council’s page on the Academy’s website.
Want to play a role yourself? The HPC is recruiting volunteers for the Behavioral Health Task Force. If you’re interested, email us here. And for even more information on our public policy priorities, visit the Academy’s Policy Forum.