The first morning of the conference, I woke up before the sun and traveled across the city to the George Washington University (GWU) Marvin Center. Gathered in a large conference room were 60 student advocates. The morning began with presentations from several experts in the health policy field, starting with Sara Rosenbaum, the director of the GWU Health Policy Department, who provided the context for health reform. Joshua Ulibarri, a representative of Lake Research Partners, spoke about the sense of urgency among young people concerning the need for health care reform. Melinda Gibson from Health Care for America Now, a national grassroots campaign for quality, affordable health care, broke down the ways to organize a national movement for health reform, and described what that reform should look like.
These presentations set the stage for the keynote speaker, Lauren Aronson. Aronson is the current Policy Director for the Office of Health Reform in the Obama administration. She discussed the Obama administration’s vision for health care reform, breaking the issues down to cost, choice and quality of care: cost-cutting for families, businesses and government; maintenance of choice for consumers regarding doctors, hospitals and health plans; and improvement in the quality of care for every American. Aronson stressed that in the eyes of the administration, health care reform is not only a “fiscal imperative,” but also a “moral imperative.” She detailed the health stipulations in the stimulus package, which includes over $150 billion for health care programs. At the urging of our participants, Aronson addressed the President’s vision for a Public Health Insurance Plan. This state-run health plan would compete with private plans, in effect leveling the playing field between private and public plans. Aronson closed by encouraging young people to continue to get involved in the policy debate. After pictures were taken and hands were shaken, Aronson left the building to get to work on what will be many difficult weeks and months ahead for health care reform.
After an informative and inspiring morning of presentations, I left with the other Roosevelt students to spend the afternoon visiting individual Senators’ staff and Senate committee staff on Capitol Hill. These group meetings included the Senate Committee on Aging and the Senate Budget and Finance Committee. We finished our day meeting with staff from the Democratic Policy Committee in Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office, feeling ready to bring our youthful perspective to the health policy debate.
The second day of the conference brought together a smaller group of 15 Roosevelt student leaders at the Center for American Progress to work on improving our policy ideas for the next Roosevelt Rx journal, as well as to discuss ways to strengthen our chapters and work on the Roosevelt Health Policy Center as a whole. At a conference room in the Center for American Progress, I spent the morning working on policy — fleshing out ideas and learning how to write professional policy drafts. Each student was charged with drafting his or her own policy proposal, which will be submitted to the upcoming Policy Journal Publication. Ideas around the room included the creation of a sliding income scale for Medicaid benefits eligibility, using fingerprint and retinal scanners to identify and track patients and the creation of a standardized and effective telemedicine system. The policy that I presented, which I co-drafted with Andreas Shepard ’11, proposed a change in the reimbursement method to directly reward health care providers who are preventing and controlling chronic diseases.
After reflecting on all the ideas presented and talking them over, I realized that although many of us proposed incremental change, this year’s most important goal is comprehensive health care reform — the creation of a new public health insurance plan. All the changes we proposed, like greater reimbursement for doctors who prevent and control chronic disease or the digitization of medical records, will be much more effective if we revolutionize the system with a public health insurance plan. By creating a public health insurance plan, we will be able to cover the 45 million uninsured Americans, slow the rise of costs and put more emphasis on prevention. Furthermore, through a public health insurance plan, the government can negotiate for fairer drug prices. Finally, public health insurance will make the monopolistically competitive market of health insurance much more competitive.
Currently, members of the House and Senate are drafting proposals for comprehensive health care reform and hope to vote on legislation by July. Please support these efforts to ensure that we take a giant step to cure our ailing health care system this summer.