Event Summary
As costs have rocketed up, the U.S. health care sector has grown to be a major influence on our overall economy and our nation’s fiscal outlook, for better or for worse. Health care in America has tremendous capabilities and potential, but also shows clear evidence of large gaps in quality and efficiency.
President Obama has articulated an ambitious agenda for health care reform – reducing cost growth while improving quality, maintaining choice, and providing affordable care for all Americans. Also, many health care industry leaders have stated that cost growth could be gradually reduced by 1.5 percent per year. However, questions remain: Can such reform be achieved? What are the potential economic benefits of successful reform? And what are the implications of inaction or the failure of effective reform?
Event Information
When
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
12:00 PM to 1:00 PM
Where
Falk Auditorium
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC
Map
On June 2, Christina Romer, chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, joined Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform director Mark McClellan, Harvard economist David Cutler, and former Congressional Budget Office director Douglas Holtz-Eakin to discuss health care reform and the economy. Participants discussed new evidence on the economic case for reform and the potential economic impact of achieving significant health care reform, while also addressing the risks to the economy of maintaining the status quo or failing to achieve the goals of quality improvement and cost reduction.
Transcript
MARK MCCLELLAN: Health care reform is clearly an important health issue, an important public health issue, but this report emphasizes that it is also a first-order economic issue. Health care is such an important part of our economy and it's such an important part of our fiscal outlook. I think I've heard from both Christina Romer who will be speaking shortly, and David Cutler one of our panelists, that if you're an economist working on public policy, sooner or later you're going to become a health economist and I think this event reinforces that. I think that's true for Doug as well.
Because of the health care importance in the overall economic outlook, reform that has a positive impact on health and on slowing cost growth in economic terms, reforms that increase the efficiency of the value of health care can also have a significant impact on the economy, and vice versa, failing that or acting in a way that compounds the inefficiencies in the cost growth in our health care system could have a significant negative impact.
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Participants
Presentation: The Economic Case for Health Care Reform
Christina Romer
Chair, Council of Economic Advisers
Panel Discussion
David Cutler
Otto Eckstein Professor of Applied Economics, Harvard University
Douglas Holtz-Eakin
President, DHE Consulting
Director, Engelberg Center for Health Care Reform and Leonard D. Schaeffer Chair in Health Policy Studies
Christina Romer
Chair, Council of Economic Advisers