Brotherhood Breakfasts
Breakfast events are held on Sunday mornings, starting at 9:30 AM, with the speaker usually beginning his or her talk at 10:00 AM following the bagel and lox breakfast. General admission is $10 (free for Brotherhood members).
December 13th: Alan Sager
“Affordable Medical Security for all Americans — The Easiest Problem to Solve"
Why is it that, of all countries, the United States lacks in healthcare for all of its citizens?
Healthcare problems should be easy to solve because we already spend enough for care for everyone who needs it, but one half of current healthcare spending is wasted.
To cover more people it is just a matter of spending more money, but that is proving to be harder in the United States than in other wealthy nations. Although U.S. healthcare costs financially are by far the highest in the world, because our income distribution is the least balanced, it is more expensive in the U.S. to subsidize uninsured low-income people than it is in other wealthy nations. Free market competition and government regulation have both failed, as well as every effort to contain costs over the past 40 years. What can be done? Covering uninsured people by shifting funds from higher- income states, mainly blue, to lower-income states, mainly red, could be an answer. Would it work politically? Also, let us examine cost controls that have actually worked. Let’s ask what can Washington do? And, locally, from the bottom up, what can be done?
Dr. Sager will close by considering the key challenges in delivering healthcare – by doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, homecare, and other caregivers. Following his presentation, Dr. Sager will have a question and answer period.
About the Speaker…
Alan Sager is a professor of health policy and management at the Boston University School of Public Health, where he has taught since 1983. His courses on health finance, planning, and administration have won ten awards and he received the School's teaching prize in 1998. With his colleague, Deborah Socolar, he directs the Health Reform Program (www.healthreformprogram.org).
His analyses of Massachusetts health care have shown it to be the costliest in the world, and that no cost controls attempted thus far have succeeded. Roughly one-half of current spending is wasted. Urging simultaneous pursuit of care for all and cost controls, and recognizing that physicians' decisions control almost 90 percent of health spending, he has developed a physician-centered voluntary reform that integrates finance with care delivery.
His research on prescription drug reform has shown that a combination of lower prices and higher volumes could inexpensively finance needed medications for all Americans while motivating and enabling drug makers to invest in breakthrough research.
Analyzing closings among 1,200 hospitals in 52 U.S. cities since 1936, Dr. Sager has found that hospitals located in minority neighborhoods have been substantially more likely to close; that greater efficiency bestows no survival value; and that - since a free market for hospital care is lacking - targeted public support for needed but endangered hospitals is required to protect essential hospitals and emergency rooms, their physicians, and their patients.
In 1979, Dr. Sager designed a "time banking" method of mobilizing voluntary aid for disabled citizens. It creates a parallel economy of good deeds. Individuals volunteer to help others when convenient. Contributed time is banked or used to pay time-premiums for long-term care insurance. Those who had helped others could themselves obtain aid, when needed, by exchanging their banked time for the time of a new volunteer.
Alan Sager holds a B.A. in economics from Brandeis and a Ph.D. in city and regional planning (specializing in health care) from MIT. He has served as a trustee of the former Waltham Hospital, and as a vice-president of the Health Planning Council for Greater Boston.