As the coronavirus pandemic enters its eighth month, we are still facing uncertainty about what the long-term impact of the crisis will be for the health sector, and for patients. However, the extent to which costs grow, and how the burden is distributed across payers, programs, individuals, outcomes, and geography are still very much unknown.

On Monday, October 19, KFF held a webinar on the outlook for the U.S. health system in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. The event explored what we know so far about the pandemic’s effect on costs, such as individual market premiums, and how recent changes in utilization, including expanded use of telemedicine and mail-order prescription services, may shape long-term trends. The panel addressed what the pandemic may mean for health outcomes broadly, especially as many patients have delayed or foregone routine and preventive care.

Cynthia Cox, vice president and director for the Program on the ACA at KFF, moderated, and Jay Want, executive director of the Peterson Center on Healthcare, offered closing remarks.

The panel included:

• Krutika Amin, associate director for the Program on the ACA, KFF
• Nisha Kurani, senior policy analyst for the Program on the ACA, KFF
• Luke Greenwalt, vice president, Market Access Center of Excellence, IQVIA
• Michael Kleinrock, research director, Institute for Human Data Science, IQVIA
• Christopher Mast, Clinical Informatics, Epic
• Nichole Quick, Clinical Informatics, Epic

The webinar drew on recent data and analysis available on the Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker, an online information hub supported by the Peterson Center on Healthcare that’s dedicated to monitoring and assessing the performance of the U.S. health system.