GW Law Professor Barak Richman has been selected to serve as the facilitator for a recently created Healthcare Cost Commission for the state of North Carolina.
North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein established the Commission with a June 30 Executive Order and to devise policies to reduce healthcare costs in North Carolina. Professor Richman, the Alexander Hamilton professor of business law and co-director of the Health Law and Policy Program, is charged with finding consensus among the bipartisan Commission and delivering policy recommendations to the governor by January 2027.
”It is an enormous honor, and challenge, to help North Carolina’s policymakers develop meaningful healthcare reform,” Professor Richman said. “But there is a collective determination to make real progress, and I’m hopeful that North Carolina can offer an example of how to take on complicated policy challenges.”
Professor Richman is a national expert in healthcare policy. Earlier this year, he co-authored a report on the “Medical Debt Ecosystem,” which examines how the current system of medical debt collection disproportionately disadvantages lower-income Americans unprotected by Medicaid billing. That report was covered by national news outlets, including The Washington Post and USA Today.
Professor Richman’s previous scholarship on U.S. healthcare financing and delivery has appeared in the University Pennsylvania Law Review, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the Journal of the American Medical Association, Health Affairs and Law and Contemporary Problems. He has also served on national task forces organized by the Commonwealth Fund, the National Academy of Social Insurance, and the American Antitrust Institute. In 2025, he served as special counsel for competition policy in the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of General Counsel.
As co-director of the Health Law & Policy Program, Professor Richman has convened experts on healthcare law and policy to discuss important issues such as Private Equity Investment in Physician Practices, Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangements, or ICHRAs, and the Inflation Reduction Act.
