You are invited to attend a lunchtime roundtable discussion to mark the introduction of the European Health Care Consensus Group.

The European Health Care Consensus Group is intended to draw together health policy experts from across Europe to learn from each other’s systems in order to establish recommendations for consumer-driven, incentive-based principles for improving national health care systems.

Mr. Stephen Pollard will launch the group by leading a discussion on the respective problems and successes of different European models.

The lunch is aimed at both health care specialists and those interested in learning about the ways in which debates on health policy are moving across Europe.

Stephen Pollard is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for the New Europe, where he directs the health policy programme. From 1998-2000 he was a columnist for the Daily Express in London. Mr. Pollard maintains his career as a writer on health care and other issues, with frequent columns in the Sunday Telegraph, the Independent, Wall Street Journal Europe, and the Daily Mail.

He is currently writing a biography of the British Home Secretary, David Blunkett. From 1995-97 he was Head of Research at the Social Market Foundation in London, and before that was Research Director of the Fabian Society. He was closely involved with health policy in both positions. He is widely cited as one of the key figures behind the modernization of the Labour Party and was described by the Sunday Times as a "Labour guru".

He has been a Visiting Lecturer at Harvard Business School on health care policy and in February 2001 he gave a series of lectures on health policy at Berkeley. He is the co-author of the best selling study of contemporary Britain, A Class Act - The Myth of Britain's Classless Society (Penguin, 1998).