Persistent Barriers to Reform of the American Health Care System - a Colloquy

Most other industrialized democracies have created a statutory right to health care for legal residents. For the most part, these countries have achieved the goal of universal coverage and created systems that produce measurable outcomes that are superior to ours, in terms of outcomes, participant satisfaction and average per capita costs. The goal of achieving universal, efficient, and effective health care with a high level of public acceptance has been pursued for over a hundred years in the United States. Yet, despite significant incremental progress, we remain far from that goal. This colloquy will address the question “why has achievement of the goal of universal health care been so hard in the United States?”

Although we have made progress, notably through the passage of Medicare, Medicaid and, most recently, the Affordable Care Act, the means and goal of health care reform remains a topic of impassioned debate and bitter partisan controversy. Even if the stated goals of the ACA are achieved, many Americans will remain left behind and many more will face daunting financial and other barriers to care.

This colloquy will be initiated by short presentations among a group of national health care experts. It will be followed by a series of structured conversations among panelists, and between panelists and the public. Questions will be encouraged, and follow-up questions and comments will be permitted under guidelines intended to keep the discussion focused and moving along. We hope to have a free-ranging and candid discussion of the technical, cultural and political barriers to further health care reform in the United States.

Participants: 

• Moderator: Philip Caper, MD, Health Policy columnist, Bangor Daily News, Board member, Physicians for a National Health Program and Maine AllCare.
• Theodore Marmor, Professor Emeritus of Public Policy and Management & Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Yale School of Management
• Marcia Angell, Senior Lecturer in Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School and former Editor in Chief, The New England Journal of Medicine 
• Merton Bernstein, Walter D. Coles Professor of Law Emeritus, Washington University of Law
• Donald Berwick, Former Administrator, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)
• Laurence Seidman, Chaplin Tyler Professor of Economics, University of Delaware
• Joseph Antos, Wilson H. Taylor Scholar in Health Care and Retirement Policy, American Enterprise Institute (AEI)
• Joseph White, Luxenberg Family Professor of Public Policy and Director of the Center for Policy Studies, Case Western Reserve University
• John McDonough, Professor of Public Health Practice in the Department of Health Policy & Management, Harvard School of Public Health

Please see the links below for background reading material relevant to this interest group.