Leaving party playbooks behind

Looking for a non-partisan discussion of health care reform? Good luck.

For an issue as politically charged as reforming America’s ailing health care system, it is difficult to find voices that are critical of both Republican and Democratic positions on the issue.

Yet, that is exactly what the event “A Non-Partisan Look at Health Care Reform” promised Monday at the Whittenberger Auditorium.

Put together by the Union Board, the IU College Democrats and the IU College Republicans, the event featured a panel of six IU professors. These experts, from a diversity of backgrounds ranging from finance to philosophy to multicultural affairs, largely delivered on the promise of discussion outside Democratic and Republican play books.

Through the initial discussion and the question-and-answer session, it became clear that panelists disagreed on many aspects of what good reform should look like. There was, however, widespread agreement that Republicans and Democrats are not currently working toward the kind of reform the country needs.

The first panelist to speak was John Hill, professor of accounting and the Arthur M. Weimer Chair of Business Administration. Hill said he saw little or nothing in current health care reform legislation to improve health care affordability or quality. He pointed to the Swiss health care system as a good example for America to follow.

Next was Nicole Quon, an assistant professor in the School of Public and Environmental Affairs, who tried to analyze how people’s values affect their views on reform. 

The third speaker, Martin Spechler, a professor of economics, discussed his opposition to a single-payer health care system, igniting plenty of back-and-forth between himself and Milton Fisk, professor emeritus of philosophy, and Robert Stone, assistant clinical professor of emergency medicine at the IU School of Medicine, both of whom supported such a policy.

Meanwhile, Edwin Marshall, professor of optometry and vice president for diversity, equity and multicultural affairs, talked about the racial and ethnic disparities in how health care is delivered.

Debate between panelists and certain members of the audience became heated during the question-and-answer session as the topic turned to the ability of competition to help curb health care prices, and the event ended largely in disagreement.

It is too bad that one of the only thing the panel widely agreed upon was that reform as it looks now is likely to disappoint.

This sense of defeat and disagreement with no common ground isn’t merely isolated to IU. In fact, the argumentation and general unresolved disputes plague our national health care debate as well – and might be the reason that successful and working reform does not get passed. Health care is an extremely complex issue with lots of facets for disagreement. Hopefully, however, this will not be reason enough to fail to repair a system that clearly is broken.