Harvard Panel: Prognosis Poor for Health Reform

If you believe panelists at Harvard University Medical School earlier this week, chances are slim that the proposed health care reform remedies now before Congress will do much good.

The speakers included a Canadian doctor, a business professor from Stanford, the author of "How American Health Care Killed My Father", and an economics professor from Harvard.

The most telling quotes:

"I am very pessimistic about what you are going to be able to do," said Allan Detsky, a doctor and professor at the University of Toronto. He blamed the American lawmaking process, where significant proposals become watered down by competing interests.

The health care plans before Congress are "not on the right track," said Daniel Kessler, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. "The current bill confuses access with insurance, which is going to lead us to a world of unsustainable deficits, very high implicit marginal tax rates, and increased government controls of people's personal decisions in exchange for health benefits that are at best uncertain."

David Goldhill, author of the 'health care killed my father' piece (and CEO of The Game Show Network) argued that proposals to offer subsidies to expand insurance coverage and top-down systems of cost control, "haven't worked before," and "I am skeptical it's going to work now."

More optimistic was Harvard's David Cutler, an econ professor and adviser to the Obama election campaign, who said the proposed legislation takes some necessary steps, but that "this is a path, not a leap. What we have to do is reform the health care system over the next decade, not reform it overnight."

More detailed reporting of the discussion is available at The Harvard Gazette.

Do you agree with this pessimism? Or are you confident from what you've seen and read about the health care proposals that they will meet their goals, namely to extend benefits to the uninsured and cut costs?

(No stethoscopes image by myklroventine, CC 2.0)