Prof speaks on health insurance

Health Economics professor Mark Pauly appeared on Condition Critical: The American Health Care Forum, a nationally broadcasted forum hosted by Phil Donahue on April 9. The forum, which received many negative reviews, offered the three options for a national health insurance plan: single payer, employer based and market-driven. Pauly said he supports market-driven insurance plans which is available to federal government employees. The plan was introduced by Stuart Butler of the Heritage Foundation. The option entails many insurance plans competing against each other in an almost perfectly competitive market. Benefits of such a plan are include higher quality insurance plans at lower costs and gauranteed access. According to Pauly, this cures the root of insurance problems with existing policies, which is rapidly rising insurance costs. He said the current system causes a decreasing number of insured people and an increasing number of underinsured people. "I agree with Stuart Butler and what he said about a competitive market because that will bring down costs," Pauly said. Pauly and Health Care Systems professor Patricia Danzon wrote a book entitled A Plan for Responsible National Health Insurance, which proposes a national health insurance employing tactics that would make insurance more universal. "The book's basic plan is to obtain universal coverage but no high costs," Danzon said. But Danzon said she did not agree with Butler's plan. Other professors involved in health care issues said they feel the same way. "If everyone was paid the way federal employees are paid, then we don't have a problem . . . but that's not the situation," General Internal Medicine professor Sankey Williams said. "Some people don't have employment or their employer doesn't provide it." Pauly and his wife said the show did not give him enough of an opportunity to express himself. "We were proud of Mark, but we thought he didn't get enough time," Pauly's wife, Katheryn, said. "I thought the speakers in the audience got more time to explain themselves than the panel." Others did not like the forum focusing so much on Jane Fulton, the spokesperson for the Canadian system. The Canadian system is a government funded insurance plan that gives coverage to everyone but has has a longer waiting period for medical treatment. Pauly added that several of the participants did not have substantive enough arguments and that they were saying things mainly for show. "I thought there was too much pontificating going on," Pauly said. And some professors said they doubted the informational content of the show. "This [national health insurance] is a very complex issue and the stakes are very high . . . and as to providing people information it is far short." Williams said. "But if the purpose was to get people interested . . . it accomplished its goal. I don't know what the goal was. You can't teach brain surgery overnight." "The difficulty is there are hidden costs in the Canadian system. If they are considered, they could be as high as ours," Jennifer Conway, manager of Public Affairs at the University's Leonard David Institute, said. "There are a lot of issues that aren't addressed that make the view distorted. The problem for us is that although Canada has a lot of good points, it is comparably as expensive as ours to run."

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