This was originaly published in the UMass Lowell Student Newspaper The Connector on April 27, 2010.
Professors Offer Opinions about Health Reform
Professors Offer Opinions about Health Reform
The debate about health reform, which has gripped this nation for the last year, has been filled with issues that probably seem perplexing to many. Even after the passage of the final bill several weeks ago, there still appears to be a lack of understanding about what the bill actually means for many across the country.
After talking to three professors from the community health and sustainability department along with Monica Galizzi of the economics department, it is clear that the university’s faculty can cast some light on this complex topic.
These professors have been spending their entire careers looking into issues that politicians in Washington, and pundits across the country, have been heatedly debating for months.
Particulary there seemed to be a general agreement between all four professors that while the reform is historic, it does not go far enough to address some of the most fundamental issues within the present system.
For example, A. James Lee, an economist who has held various positions within the government, private and non-profit sectors analyzing health care’s cost effectiveness, offered an observation of how money is spent on health insurance when he said, “As much as thirty percent or more of health care services being provided today are either unnecessary or possibly dangerous…with the current financial relationship providers get paid more for doing more.”
His assessment is related to a growing, but rarely discussed, consensus amongst health economists that the current methods of reimbursement for health services are unsustainable.
Prof. Craig Slatin, whose primary area of research is public, environmental and occupational health policy, sees this issue and other financial inefficiencies within the system as a result of the negative influence of those who profit from it. Discussing the insurance, pharmaceutical, hospital and high-tech medical equipment industries, he said “the system’s designed to support the financial needs of those sectors… what the bill barely did was to remove their clout.”
Despite this criticism, he did see the bill as a step in the right direction. “It’s a major shift in how we’re thinking about health care. It says that running a system that neglects 50 million people outright… that’s unacceptable,” said Prof. Slatin.
Prof. Slatin sees a single-payer system, like in most other western countries, as the only solution that will begin to effectively address this issue of the uninsured along with cost control issues. This type of system features everyone in country being provided with health insurance paid for by the government through tax revenues.
He noted that single-payer would do the most to reverse what he sees as the most fundamental problem with the current system; namely too much focus on individual choices and not enough focus on environmental and financial issues, which have been shown to have a statistically high effect on one’s health.
However as Prof. Carlos Eduardo Siqueira, who is also an advocate for a single-payer system, explains this solution was “off the table” from the beginning of the debate about health reform.
He added that even a public option, a non-profit government run insurance alternative, did not make its way to the final bill, despite wide public support.
Prof. Siqueria suggested that a public option may have been an effective method of cost control. Prof. Lee was slightly more skeptical casting it as a “red herring” in the debate unlikely to have much of an effect.
Additionally, while discussing about a portion of the bill which mandates everyone in the country be insured, Siqueira said “We should provide [health insurance] as a right to people; I would prefer that you had rights instead of mandates.”
Prof. Siqueira, who was a practicing physician in Brazil for years, was hesitant to compare the two country’s health systems due to the enormous gaps in wealth between them. He did say that Brazil, which has a single-payer system, does a very good job insuring its citizens despite rampant poverty.
Nevertheless there have been numerous arguments made that single-payer or any more government involvement in health care would bankrupt the nation.
Prof. Monica Galizzi, an economist who specializes in labor economics, has some doubts about a congressional budget office study which determined that the bill would reduce the federal deficit over the next decade.
However she noted that when deciding how to allot money for health care, the question of how much value a society puts on health must be dealt confronted. She added that personally she viewed health care as “a basic need.”
Yet Galizzi who comes from Italy, another single-payer country, understood that there was not wide acceptance of the notion that health care is a basic need in the United States.
While thinking that single-payer is an effective method of insuring a country, she doubted whether implementing a similar system would be possible in the United States. She views this as a result of “[ideological] resistance about government intervention as well as a traditional reliance on the free market. It would be something very difficult to sell here.”
Offering a slightly different opinion about the reason that the fight for health care for all Americans, an almost century old fight, has not succeeded Prof. Siqueria suggested it was due to the power and influence of private insurance companies, “They are becoming oligopolies… They are not allowing the country to have options that many other developed countries have.”
After talking to three professors from the community health and sustainability department along with Monica Galizzi of the economics department, it is clear that the university’s faculty can cast some light on this complex topic.
These professors have been spending their entire careers looking into issues that politicians in Washington, and pundits across the country, have been heatedly debating for months.
Particulary there seemed to be a general agreement between all four professors that while the reform is historic, it does not go far enough to address some of the most fundamental issues within the present system.
For example, A. James Lee, an economist who has held various positions within the government, private and non-profit sectors analyzing health care’s cost effectiveness, offered an observation of how money is spent on health insurance when he said, “As much as thirty percent or more of health care services being provided today are either unnecessary or possibly dangerous…with the current financial relationship providers get paid more for doing more.”
His assessment is related to a growing, but rarely discussed, consensus amongst health economists that the current methods of reimbursement for health services are unsustainable.
Prof. Craig Slatin, whose primary area of research is public, environmental and occupational health policy, sees this issue and other financial inefficiencies within the system as a result of the negative influence of those who profit from it. Discussing the insurance, pharmaceutical, hospital and high-tech medical equipment industries, he said “the system’s designed to support the financial needs of those sectors… what the bill barely did was to remove their clout.”
Despite this criticism, he did see the bill as a step in the right direction. “It’s a major shift in how we’re thinking about health care. It says that running a system that neglects 50 million people outright… that’s unacceptable,” said Prof. Slatin.
Prof. Slatin sees a single-payer system, like in most other western countries, as the only solution that will begin to effectively address this issue of the uninsured along with cost control issues. This type of system features everyone in country being provided with health insurance paid for by the government through tax revenues.
He noted that single-payer would do the most to reverse what he sees as the most fundamental problem with the current system; namely too much focus on individual choices and not enough focus on environmental and financial issues, which have been shown to have a statistically high effect on one’s health.
However as Prof. Carlos Eduardo Siqueira, who is also an advocate for a single-payer system, explains this solution was “off the table” from the beginning of the debate about health reform.
He added that even a public option, a non-profit government run insurance alternative, did not make its way to the final bill, despite wide public support.
Prof. Siqueria suggested that a public option may have been an effective method of cost control. Prof. Lee was slightly more skeptical casting it as a “red herring” in the debate unlikely to have much of an effect.
Additionally, while discussing about a portion of the bill which mandates everyone in the country be insured, Siqueira said “We should provide [health insurance] as a right to people; I would prefer that you had rights instead of mandates.”
Prof. Siqueira, who was a practicing physician in Brazil for years, was hesitant to compare the two country’s health systems due to the enormous gaps in wealth between them. He did say that Brazil, which has a single-payer system, does a very good job insuring its citizens despite rampant poverty.
Nevertheless there have been numerous arguments made that single-payer or any more government involvement in health care would bankrupt the nation.
Prof. Monica Galizzi, an economist who specializes in labor economics, has some doubts about a congressional budget office study which determined that the bill would reduce the federal deficit over the next decade.
However she noted that when deciding how to allot money for health care, the question of how much value a society puts on health must be dealt confronted. She added that personally she viewed health care as “a basic need.”
Yet Galizzi who comes from Italy, another single-payer country, understood that there was not wide acceptance of the notion that health care is a basic need in the United States.
While thinking that single-payer is an effective method of insuring a country, she doubted whether implementing a similar system would be possible in the United States. She views this as a result of “[ideological] resistance about government intervention as well as a traditional reliance on the free market. It would be something very difficult to sell here.”
Offering a slightly different opinion about the reason that the fight for health care for all Americans, an almost century old fight, has not succeeded Prof. Siqueria suggested it was due to the power and influence of private insurance companies, “They are becoming oligopolies… They are not allowing the country to have options that many other developed countries have.”
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