Approximately 60 University of Michigan students and Ann Arbor area residents gathered Monday afternoon in Robertson Auditorium at the Ross School of Business to hear Amy Finkelstein speak. talk About inequalities in the American health care system and her book, “We’ve Got You Covered: Rebooting American Health Care.” Ms. Finkelstein received her Ph.D. In economics, John and Jenny S. McDonald professor of economics Massachusetts Institute of Technologytalked about the policy issues that led to almost the following. 30 million Americans lack health insurance and lack access to adequate medical care.of financial seminar, Faculty of Economics and Ross School of Business speakers.
Mr. Finkelstein is interested in health crossroads We care about health care and the economy, and believe we can improve basic health coverage for all Americans without requiring additional taxpayers. Business professor Sarah Miller introduced Finkelstein and began her talk with a question about universal health care coverage.
“The United States only It’s a wealthy country that doesn’t provide universal health care to its citizens and residents,” Miller said. “How can we get out of this mess? What are your suggestions?”
Finkelstein responded to Miller by sharing her goals and vision for the future of U.S. health care, which she expanded on in her book.
“We can’t discuss solutions until we agree on goals,” Finkelstein said. “And there are many good reasons for governments to be involved in health insurance. In our book, we write about the extraordinary efforts to provide everyone, regardless of resources, access to the health care they need. It argues that there is a strong implicit unwritten social contract that can be debated and that one can decide whether or not to normatively agree to it.
Mr. Finkelstein went on to talk about how taxpayers have advocated for meaningful health care reform throughout history.
“If you look at the history of our social policy, if you look at our attempts at health care reform, the motivation has always been that it’s not acceptable to just stand by and do nothing. It’s motivated by ideas,” Finkelstein said. “When I say us, I don’t mean individuals; I mean as taxpayers lobbying on public policy when people are sick enough and can’t afford the care they need. Our current policy. If you look at the whole patchwork of and how that came about, and I’ll talk about that in the book, you basically see that most of the policies come from there.”
In an interview with the Michigan Daily, LSA junior Mohamadou Ndiaye said he attended the lecture because he is interested in health economics and had read Finkelstein’s book.
“She is a very good speaker and has a lot of influence on health economics,” Ndiaye said. “My main lesson is that in some cases the solution is much simpler than it seems. Read the book and think about how to best design your health coverage.” Many nuances. there is. ”
Mr. Ndiaye also spoke about the importance of exclusion. cost sharingor expenses that an individual pays out of pocket that are not covered by insurance – a point Mr. Finkelstein emphasized in his talk.
“If you look at the economics, (the cost burden) should go away,” Ndiaye said. “[Finkelstein]talks about how she’s been preaching it and how it’s not true in this particular scenario. See how it applies to real life. That alone makes it very interesting in the classroom, in research, etc…It’s really important to not take for granted all sorts of unfolding approaches to any situation.”
Daily staff reporter Ellen Drejza can be reached at [email protected].
