Former governor debates health care
by Kathryn Graham
The Metropolitan
Guest speakers debated current issues at the Seventh Annual Honors Conference last week. Dolph Grundman, Metro's honors program director and history professor, organizes the conference to the benefit of students each year. This year's theme topic was "The Campaign of 2004: Did it Clarify or Obfuscate?" Grundman brought speakers in from both sides of each issue.
Former Colorado Governor, Richard Lamm, spoke at the conference specifically about America's health care related issues.
"Polls show Americans dislike their health care more than any other country in the world. Ask Canada if they like their health care. Canadians get to see their doctors faster and more often than we do," said Lamm.
However, Lamm said recently in The Rocky Mountain News that the German health-care system comes closer to the model he would favor for America if he were forced to choose.
"We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to save a baby that was born to a mother that we didn't give prenatal care to. We let people die because we are not giving them basic health care. There should be some way to make sure that everyone can get some sort of health care, although some can be left to the markets," Lamm said.
Lamm's opponent on the health care issue, Linda Gorman, an economist with the Independence Institute, argued that we should pay our own small health care costs and that overall health care should be rationed. She argued that a governmental health care plan would cause higher taxes and therefore favors health savings accounts.
"Canadians can't keep their physicians. People are buying health care with someone else's money. If you want to control this we have to stop. Money for health care will come from higher taxes. To make things better ration it," said Gorman.
Gorman also argues that it is not the fault of our current health care system that babies are born with low birth weights and people are dying. "Illegal drugs are found in women as a reason for low birth weight. Not many people die unless they're strung out on drugs or something," she said.
In line with this year's conference theme, health care reform is one of the hot issues in this up-coming presidential election.
Similar to what Gorman advocates, President Bush's health care plan includes establishing health savings accounts that could be established for Americans with tax credits. Bush's health plan also suggests lowering drug costs by strengthening competition between generic and brand name competitors, increasing prescription drug benefits to seniors and giving flexibility to states to extend Medicaid eligibility.
Presidential hopeful John Kerry's health plan would cut family premiums by up to $1,000-giving every American access to affordable plans by extending coverage to 95 percent of Americans, including every child. Kerry's plan would also reduce prescription drug costs by allowing the re-importation from Canada and would cut the costs that are wasted on paperwork and the administrative process. Kerry claims that his health plan will be voluntary. Americans would still have the choice to keep their private coverage.
"I think that neither political party can come to grips with it but I think John Kerry has a little better plan," said Lamm.
Gorman disagrees with Lamm regarding Kerry's proposal for health care reform.
"If you let the private sector get involved you have more choice. Kerry is saying more centralized control," Gorman said.
"No matter what you have someone is going to set limits to it. Right now insurance companies are setting all kinds of limits but the best way is not to leave it to individual pay. People don't know what they need, it's complicated," said Lamm.
In conclusion to the health care argument, both Gorman and Lamm agree that something has to be done with the current state of our health care system, although which direction it should go is where the argument lies.
Lamm appeared flexible on his position indicating Americans need to at least take some sort of action.
"Linda and I both agree there should be some experimentation in health care," said Lamm.
Other issues that were discussed at this year's honors conference included immigration, the economy, the environment, education, the media, campaign financing and Iraq. The conference schedule was spread out over two days.
"We try to pick panelists that have different points of view and who are experts in their area," Grundman said.
"I thought the panels were very good and that there were lots of lively discussions, particularly the one on health care and the one on energy and the environment-immigration certainly was heated," said Grundman.
Honors programs are national in scope and provide an opportunity for students who want to dig a little bit deeper into subjects of interest. "The most important thing is that it provides another community at Metro," Grundman said. |
