In an informative session on the recently passed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Board of Overseers hosted an engaged panel discussion with leading health care and political experts at the Critical Voices event on June 8.
The discussion was facilitated by award-winning journalist and BIDMC overseer, Reverend Liz Walker. Walker opened the discussion by expressing her satisfaction that BIDMC leadership is continually engaged in this important discourse about health care reform.
The discussion focused on national health care reform and its impact on Massachusetts. Panelist Stuart Altman, Ph.D., professor of National Health Policy at the Heller School of Social Policy Management at Brandeis University, spoke to the progressiveness of the state in passing its own health care reform act first. “America looks to us as the beacon for what we did right,” he said.
Robert Blendon, Ph.D., professor of health policy and political analysis at the Harvard University School of Public Health and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, noted efforts on the part of the state’s previous administration and Senator Kerry to protect Massachusetts in the national bill. “Most of the points that are part of the Massachusetts bill will stay in place,” said Blendon. “The national bill includes special support for the state of Massachusetts.”
The panelists fielded questions about the increasing need for primary care physicians, disparities in payment structures among hospitals and physicians, compensation for doctors specializing in end-of-life care, the Medicare program, malpractice costs, and challenges of communicating key components of the national bill to the public.
“We aren’t sure how societal trends in Massachusetts and in the country for which we are preparing for will be aggravated by this bill,” said panelist Paul Levy, president and CEO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Levy added that he anticipates hospitals will, with time, switch to a service function to primary care and that with this shift hospitals will need to become better at delivering care and preventing additional cost.
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