Health Policy Lecture Policy Brief:
"What the Candidates Should Be Saying about Health Reform"

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The School of Health Management and Policy hosted the inaugural Health Economics and Policy Lecture on
November 9, 2008 at Arizona State University.

The Lecture featured Mark Pauly, Ph.D., Bendheim Professor and Professor of Health Care Systems in the Department of Health Care Systems at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He also holds appointments as professor in the departments of Business and Public Policy and Insurance and Risk Management in the Wharton School, and in the Department of Economics in the School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania. He is an internationally renowned expert in medical economics, health policy, and health insurance and has been a consultant to major hospital associations, pharmaceutical firms and policy institutes. His most recent research focuses on analysis of health care reform, the conceptual foundations for cost-benefit analysis of pharmaceuticals, and provider incentives in managed care. Dr. Pauly serves on the editorial board of Public Finance Quarterly, is an advisory editor for Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, and co-editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Health Care Finance and Economics. He is a member of the National Advisory Council, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services); the Committee on Evaluation of Vaccine Purchase Financing in the United States, Institute of Medicine/National Academy of Sciences; and the Medicare Technical Advisory Panel. Dr. Pauly earned his Ph.D. in economics from University of Virginia.

Here are some excerpts from the 2008 Health Policy Brief:

"Americans look different, and they are different when it comes to health insurance and health care. In fact the strongest normative argument for a competitive market in health insurance (I think actually in a lot of other areas as well) is not that it has some magical power to improve productive efficiency, but that it has a power compared to government to allow different people to get different things, instead of everybody getting the same thing."

"One thing candidates could say in the interest of honesty would be, "If it is mandated that your boss provides insurance to you as a worker who currently is not getting insurance on the job, you will pay for it. Maybe it will wipe out your raises for the next ten years, but it's not going to come out of your boss' pocket, it's coming out of yours."

"The overall story in health care in the United States is that price increases are not the main reason for increased spending. ...With few exceptions, the general belief amongst economists who have looked at increases in health care spending is that the quality of health care is better than it used to be, due to new technology, and it is the higher cost of higher quality care that is increasing spending."

The health economics and policy lecture is co-sponsored by the School of Health Management and Policy, W. P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University, and members of its Advisory Board.

School of Health Management and Policy Advisory Board Members:

The opinions and policy recommendations expressed in the brief are the author's own and do not necessarily represent the opinions or policy recommendations of the sponsoring organizations.

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