Challenges to controlling health care spending in Massachusetts

David Auerbach, PhD
Senior Director for Research and Cost Trends
Massachusetts Health Policy Commission

David Auerbach, PhD is a health economist and currently Senior Director for Research and Cost Trends at the Massachusetts Health Policy Commission. His team analyzes data from the state’s all-payer claims database, hospital discharge data, survey data, and other sources to understand and report on salient and policy-relevant trends and cost drivers in Massachusetts and to make recommendations to reduce the cost of health care in the state. Prior to working at the HPC, he was a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation in Boston and prior to that, he was a principal analyst at the Congressional Budget Office in Washington DC where he co-developed the model used to analyze the Affordable Care Act. He is also a national expert on the nursing workforce and an honorary fellow of the American Academy of Nursing. He has a PhD in Health Policy from Harvard University.