Roosevelt Institution hosts health care discussion
Kiki Reginato '12 / Copy Editor
Issue date: 11/4/09 Section: News
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The Oct. 26 panel also included Associate Dean of Health and Wellness Craig Andrade, Associate Professor of Philosophy Stephen Mathis, and Assistant Professor of Economics Phoebe Chan.
The Roosevelt Institute is a network of non-partisan, student- run think tanks with chapters on college campuses around the country. The goals of the group include informing students about issues, and writing policies that will be submitted to the national office for publication as well as sent to senators and congressmen.
"Tonight we will not be describing the political struggles in Washington," said Mark Anderson '12, co-president of the chapter, who was moderating the discussion.
The panelists began with a conversation discussing whether it would be possible to change the way that Americans think about health care.
"One drawback," said Mathis, "is that it has not been the way that we have done things and that makes it more difficult for the public to accept that shift," he later added, "we have gotten over such things in the past."
To show the perspective from the medical community, Schibanoff talked of the mismanagement of the medical industry, saying that 30 percent of the medical care we pay for is "pure waste."
Andrade, who worked as a nurse for many years at The Boston Medical Center, said, "I have witnessed the effects of people not being able to access adequate care and I have been discouraged by the way that our system has spread out treatment over racial, ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds and I hope that medical care is more available and improved in the future."
Raising the concerns of doctors who do not support President Obama's proposed plan, Schibanoff said, "Physicians are also worried about the specter of government dictating care. I don't think that they need to worry about it though because if you look at Medicare and Medicaid there are virtually no controls on those programs."
Chan said of the issues concerning insurance companies, "well, the insurance companies would have more people purchasing insurance so they would be better off. Right? The only thing that could be problematic for them that is being proposed is the public option."
Mathis, who recently published an article about the normative implications involved in the health care debate said, "The fact that it is so specialized makes it necessary to treat it as a public good. Some things, like electricity, are provided to us because they are so difficult to provide for ourselves on our own."
Some audience members believed the discussion to be one-sided. Nick Jacobsen '12 said, "I don't think that the panelists kept their opinions a secret."
Anderson, who did not hold a question-and-answer session after the discussion, said that the purpose of the discussion was to inform student about the issue in an environment that didn't involve a contentious debate.
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