SAN FRANCISCO — There’s so much money floating around here thisweek, you can almost see it wafting through the air.

About 10,000 attendees, mostly confident men in well-cut suitsand even nicer watches, are packing the elegant Westin St. FrancisHotel for the invite-only J.P. MorganHealthcare Conference, which ends Thursday.

For many of these investors, health providers, insurers and entrepreneurs at the nation’slargest and most prestigious health investment conference, it’s all aboutthe deal — and the after-hours parties.

In the first few days of what’s become known as J.P. MorganWeek, New Jersey-based Celgene announced it would spend up to $7 billion to acquire ImpactBiomedicines. And Novo Nordisk, the world’s biggest insulin maker,bid $3.1 billion for a Belgian biotech firm.

For those who didn’t land a coveted invite, satelliteconferences on digital health and biotechnology dotthe city, offering lesser mortals an opportunity to network andmake their own deals. Former Vice President Joe Biden even poppedinto town to keynote the StartUp Health Festival satellite conference,speaking about cancer treatment costs and electronic healthrecords.

The J.P. Morgan gathering comes at a jarring time when youconsider that the other world of health care is flooded withuncertainty for the millions of ordinary Americans who inhabit it.They face a precarious political landscape in which the future ofthe Affordable Care Act remains uncertain and Republican leaders inCongress mull dramatic cuts to Medicaid and Medicare.

John Baackes, CEO of the nation’s largest public health plan,L.A. Care, which insures 2.1 million low-income patients, said ifhis enrollees wandered into the conference, “they’d think they werein a foreign land and that this has nothing to do with them.”

Much of U.S. health care is underwritten by public dollars, butpeople here didn’t come to talk about that or rising costs,particularly for prescription drugs. Only a few presentations atthis year’s conference have touched on prices, including a J.P.Morgan study released Monday that found many Americans put off medicalcare until they get their tax refund — a clear sign that that theydon’t have enough saved up to pay for care when they need it.

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Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit news servicecovering health issues. It is an editorially independent program ofthe Kaiser Family Foundation that is not affiliated with KaiserPermanente.

“It’s just so striking how much maneuvering and desire there isat this meeting for a piece of the 18 percent of GDP spent on health care,” mused Dr. Vivian Lee,the former leader of the University of Utah Health Care system, whomade a point of tracking costs with pinpoint precision. “Is anyonehere trying to decrease their share?”

Baackes, who comes to the conference to network and monitor thelatest developments in health care, said he’s always skeptical ofthe well-heeled company officials who attend promising betterhealth outcomes and cost savings. “In a way, there’s too much moneywalking around here,” he said. “Investors are thinking, ‘Healthcare is a $3 trillion sector of the economy; surely it will benefitfrom my genius.’”

Many attendees view the conference with a less critical eye.

“It’s a useful place for us to be,” said Amanda Cowley, strategydirector of the quasi-governmental organization that produces theU.S. Pharmacopeia, a compendium of information and standards forproducing medicines and food ingredients. Cowley said she and hercolleagues need to learn about emerging health technologies so theycan anticipate their future work products.

Cowley stood in a line of hundreds of attendees waiting to dineon tri-tip, vegetables and macarons while listening to Microsoftfounder Bill Gates talk about how his foundation is helping improvethe health of subsistence farmers and children in the developingworld.

But there was little talk of America’s subsistence patients, whooften cannot afford the expensive drugs and medical devices thatare bought and sold in deals brokered at conferences like these, inprivate rooms guarded by phalanxes of staffers at tony hotels.

Those patients, however, were the focus of a Medicaid panel heldTuesday at Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco’s troubledTenderloin district, a few blocks and a world away from the WestinSt. Francis. That event, which drew about 70 people, was sponsoredby ConsejoSano, a Southern California-based startup that has raised$7.2 million to help Spanish speakers better navigate the healthsystem.

Rallying the troops at Glide was former Medicare and Medicaidchief Andy Slavitt, a fierce critic of Republican efforts to repeal and replace theACA. Slavitt recently invested in Cityblock Health, a public health startup focusing on Medicaid and other low-incomepatients.

The good thing about J.P. Morgan Week, Slavitt told KaiserHealth News, is that it draws innovative people who want to invest.“The question is, should health care capital be focused on solvingbig problems and getting rewarded for them, or just focused on thestatus quo?”

Kaiser Health News is a nonprofit news servicecovering health issues. It is an editorially independent program ofthe Kaiser Family Foundation that is not affiliated with KaiserPermanente.