Here's a bit of what we learned at an informative Health Affairs briefing tied to its September/October issue on "Bending the Curve."

1. There may be no such thing as a free lunch but if we do some simple (relatively speaking) health system changes, we may get a free snack
2. Moving from Medicare "demonstration projects" to Medicare "pilot projects" is a big deal. (If they work, we can go ahead with implementation much more quickly)
3. Harvard economists can do great slides (maybe not quite as good as our Gumby, but we still like the whole tricycle vs red sports car thing).

The consensus was that "bending the curve" is difficult but essential if we don't want to all go broke (or turn healthcare into a luxury item), that we probably need a whole bunch of different payment innovations and models -- and that it's really, really, really, hard for politicians to talk about this.   

The articles are up at the Health Affairs (if you aren't a subscriber you can get some of the papers at RWJF) . We'll post in more detail once the PowerPoints and related materials are up so we can link for you.