Acting Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Eric Hargan addresses reporters during the daily news briefing at the White House in Washington, November 30, 2017.

The Trump administration is battling rising health costs by going after the incentives that help drive higher prices.

That's the idea at the heart of the new payment model for high-priced drugs laid out by the administration last week. It is also the driving force behind a new initiative to engage health care investors about how reimbursement policies are fueling funds for new treatment options in the pipeline.

"We have certain initiatives that we do where we depend on innovation," Eric Hargan, deputy secretary for Health and Human Services, told CNBC in a recent interview.

"Whether it's in digital health, new drugs, health [technology], new payments models, managing patient population, all those things are crucial to continuing to improve people's lives. Much of that is driven by the investors," he added.

Last week, the deputy secretary sat down with CNBC to discuss the investor initiative at the Cleveland Clinic Innovation Summit. His objective is to gain better insights from venture capitalists, private equity and strategic health care investors, through a year-long project dubbed the Deputy Secretary's Innovation and Investment Summit.

"Is there some way in which what we're doing, whether it's on regulatory side or the reimbursement side, is signaling to them invest here [or] put your money over there. We don't have a lot of insight into that," Hargan said.

With increasing reimbursement pressures coming from both government and the private sector payers, health care investors are likely anxious to make sure their voices are heard. Hargan is currently deciding on the members for the summit group, and plans to convene the first meeting in December.