Regence CEO to Chair National Effort Promoting Broader Health Care S...( PORTLAND Ore. Oct. 10 /- Mark Gan...),Health

PORTLAND, Ore., Oct. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Mark Ganz, President and Chief Executive Officer of Regence, has been tapped to chair a prominent group of thought leaders and health policy experts convened by The Aspen Institute. The organization is launching a major initiative to reframe and broaden the national dialogue on health care reform leading up to the 2008 presidential election and beyond.

The Aspen Health Stewardship Project will expand the health care debate to the root causes of the nation's broken system, not just the symptoms. The initiative will go beyond the question of how to expand coverage and will redirect efforts toward addressing the deep structural problems that plague the health care system. As part of this effort, a series of non-partisan tools will be created to help the public evaluate health care reform proposals as they are presented.

"The diagnosis and the plan for what ails us, I believe, will be found at the intersection of science, economics and culture," said Ganz. "Only by shifting the culture underlying our health care system can we make real progress toward a system that is affordable and sustainable, and delivers quality- and customer-oriented health care to every American."

Ganz introduced the project at the inaugural Aspen Health Forum in Aspen, Colorado, a gathering of more than 400 people, including Nobel Prize laureates, prominent officials from the National Institutes of Health, and other thought leaders in medical science, health care and health policy.

In addition to Ganz, members of the Aspen Health Stewardship Project include Joseph Hogan, president and chief executive officer of GE Healthcare; Michael E. Porter, the Bishop William Lawrence University Professor at Harvard Business School; Elizabeth Teisberg, Associate Professor at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business; Dr. Robert Honigberg, chief medical officer of GE Healthcare; John Parr, co-founder of Civic Results; Franklin Ra
'/>"/>