Christopher F. Koller

Christopher F. Koller is a Senior Advisor for Ariadne Labs, He recently retired as President of the Milbank Memorial Fund. He was the country’s first health insurance commissioner, serving in Rhode Island from 2005 to 2013.

News Articles by Christopher F. Koller

No appointments available: America’s escalating primary care shortage
April 2024

Quarterly Articles by Christopher F. Koller

Harms and Healing
June 2022

Opinions by Christopher F. Koller

What We Talk About When We Talk About Health Care Affordability
July 2026

Blog Posts by Christopher F. Koller

No Such Thing as Being Out of Harm’s Way
December 2025
Staying On the Right Side of the (Public Health) Road
October 2025
Proposed Changes to How Medicare Pays Can Help Primary Care’s Chronic Condition
September 2025
State Health Policy Leadership: Navigating Rough Seas
August 2025
Protecting and Promoting Public Service: Rejecting the Violence of Divisiveness
July 2025
“A Government Committed to Serving Everybody with Dignity and Respect”
May 2025
“Reforming” Medicaid: What Is the Problem, Exactly?
April 2025
A Real Gully Washer
February 2025
The Impact of Outsourcing the “No” in Health Care
December 2024
Fear, Trust, and Hope
November 2024
Confronting the Bully: New North Carolina Medicaid Program Gets Hospitals to Forgive and Prevent Medical Debt
September 2024
Proposed Medicare Fee Schedule Brings Important New Tools to Primary Care: Has CMS Nailed It?
August 2024
Outrunning the Beasts of Hell: How One Community Hospital Avoided the Fallout of Private Equity’s Investments in Health Care
May 2024
Improving Primary Care Access When You Can’t Wait for Policy Change
March 2024
Leading for Health
January 2024
New U.S. Health and Human Services Brief on Primary Care Offers Commitments but Leaves Questions Unanswered
November 2023
It’s Not You or Me. It’s the Health Care System.
October 2023
Costenheimer
August 2023
Gummy Bears and Gall Bladders
June 2023
The Conditions That Foster Harm
May 2023
What Can We Do to Protect Our Children?
May 2023
Primary Care Deep in the Heart of Texas
March 2023
The Flood of Medical Debt and JP Morgan
January 2023
Where Everybody Knows Your Name: Why Having a Usual Source of Care Is Important
November 2022
Per Capita Health Care Spending in States: Getting to Apples to Apples
September 2022
Owning the Car: Some States Are Taking Charge of Health Care Costs
August 2022
Harms and Healing
April 2022
Cheek to Cheek: The Dance of Leadership
February 2022
Care Is an Action, Not a Transaction
December 2021
Primary Care: Getting Systematic
September 2021
More Information Needed: How CMS Can Best Partner with State Medicaid Agencies
September 2021
Using American Rescue Plan Act Funding to Help Create a More Equitable, Healthier Future
August 2021
State Health Leadership: Hot Seats, High Stakes
June 2021
Primary Care Payment Reform: Go Hybrid
May 2021
States Start to Move Away from Health Care Cost Shifting
March 2021
H. Jack Geiger and the Power of Health Care to Transform Lives and Communities
February 2021
A Federalism Reset
December 2020
Why Primary Care Can Make COVID-19 Vaccine Distribution More Successful
December 2020
Strong Primary Care Could Help the US Prevent a Twindemic
October 2020
Softening the Blow: Policies to Support Hard-Hit Communities
August 2020
Federal Support for Primary Care Could Stimulate the Economy and Promote Long-Term Health
August 2020
Beating the Coronavirus Will Require Inspiration—Not Just Charity, Guile, and Dreams
July 2020
A Nursing Home Alternative
July 2020
Improving Population Health Will Require Confronting Racism
June 2020
Don’t Rebuild the Health System, Reorient It
May 2020
Payer Actions Can Help Sustain Primary Care During and After COVID-19
April 2020
COVID-19: Time for Health Insurers to Step Up
March 2020
Responding to COVID-19: Time for Real State-Federal Partnerships
March 2020
“Here. Not There”: Rebalancing Health Systems Toward Primary Care
February 2020
Change for Longer Life Expectancy
January 2020
A Bad Flu Season for Hospitals?
December 2019
“This Is Incredibly Motivating to Me”
November 2019
“We feel pretty lucky.”
October 2019
Sustaining Families Affected by Addiction: “Eventually We Arrive at Inequity”
September 2019
Primary Care, Not Palaces
July 2019
My, How You Are Aging!
July 2019
Putting Primary Care First?
May 2019
SIMulating Lessons in Aligning Health Care Payers
April 2019
“Deep and Abiding Relationships” – Rob Restuccia’s Legacy
March 2019
Health Care Costs—Mapping the Forest and Finding a Path
February 2019
“Deaths of Despair”: A Cultural, Not Clinical, Challenge
January 2019
To Work and To Love—Health in Theory and Practice
December 2018
Dear Governor – About Those Statements on Health Care Affordability
November 2018
Maine’s Family Caregiving Referendum—Revolt of the Sandwiched?
October 2018
State Health Policy Leadership: More Perspiration than Innovation
October 2018
Provider Payment Reform: Right Course, Wrong Students?
September 2018
When Things Go Wrong: Accountability and the Flint Water Crisis
August 2018
Making the Sandwich the Right Way: Improving the Quality of Home- and Community-Based Services
July 2018
Global Hospital Budgets in Maryland: When Economics and Altruism Align
June 2018
Long Lives for All: Dumb Luck, Personal Virtue, or Public Policy?
May 2018
Their Pain, Our Gain
April 2018
Gun Violence, Advocacy, and Leadership
March 2018
Paying the Piper
February 2018
Exemplary Public Service
January 2018
Are the States Dancing by Themselves?
December 2017
Medicaid and Merit: Forever Renegotiating
November 2017
State Health Policy Leadership: More Perspiration than Innovation
October 2017
Saying Yes to Public Leadership
September 2017
Seeing Purple: Mapping Bipartisanship in State Health Policy
August 2017
Getting More Primary Care-Oriented: Measuring Primary Care Spending
July 2017
Total Health Care Spending by State: Wide Variations in Amounts and Trends
June 2017
Medicaid Costs, Medicaid Benefits
May 2017
Competence in Government Is Not a Partisan Issue
April 2017
“Acceptably Cruddy”:The Art of the (Health Care) Deal
March 2017
Trending Now: Learning from Medicaid Spending
February 2017
Taking the Long View on Health Care – A Note to Congress
January 2017
State Flexibility? How about a Real Partnership?
December 2016
ACA Winners and Losers
November 2016
Steady Progress in Multi-Payer Primary Care Transformation
October 2016
Prescription for a Healthy Insurance Market
September 2016
Ricky is Right: Breaking the Drug Abuse/Criminal Justice Cycle
August 2016
My New ER TV Drama
July 2016
Evolving Hepatitis C Drug Coverage Policies: Seeing the Bigger Story
June 2016
Who is Responsible for Our Health?
May 2016
Payment Reform: Innovation, Evaluation, and Perspiration
April 2016
For a Surgical Operation: 200 Pesetas
March 2016
Letter to Health Care Payers: Getting on the Same Page
February 2016
State and Federal Relationships: Always Negotiating
January 2016
Five Reasons for Population Health Hope in 2015
December 2015
When Values and Evidence Collide: Reducing Teen Pregnancy Rates in Colorado
November 2015
Better Health Care Systems—A Mutual Effort
October 2015
Non-Partisan, but Not Neutral
September 2015
Improving State Health Policy Leadership
August 2015
They Called It “Secret,” We Call It “Confidential”
July 2015
“Oh, Baltimore. Man, It’s Hard Just to Live”
June 2015
Why Can’t We Be Friends? The Challenge of Public-Private Collaborations that Improve Health Care
May 2015
No Longer Trying to Have it Both Ways: Measuring Total Health Care Costs
April 2015
Keeping Lives Safe: the Australian Way
March 2015
Transforming Primary Care: The March Continues
February 2015
“Doing Population Health”: Teaching a Pig to Sing?
January 2015
What’s on the Minds of the States?
December 2014
Ebola Mania and the Reality of Uncertainty
November 2014
Sovaldi Redux – The States Muddle Through
October 2014
Transforming Delivery Systems—It’s All About Alignment
September 2014
Learning Chinese
August 2014
New Hepatitis C Drug, Old Problems
July 2014
Thinking and Doing
June 2014
The Work of Transforming Primary Care
May 2014

Publications by Christopher F. Koller

Investing in Primary Care: The Missing Strategy in America’s Fight Against Chronic Disease
February 2026
Implementing High-Quality Primary Care: A Policy Menu for States
September 2025
Not Just Squeezing the Balloon: A Comprehensive Set of State Strategies for Addressing Health Care Cost
October 2024
Defining the State Role in Primary Care Reform
May 2024
Testimony: How Primary Care Improves Health Care Efficiency
March 2024
The Path to Coordinated Federal Leadership to Strengthen Primary Health Care
November 2022

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