As the country prepares itself for the second term of the Bush administration, many concerns come to the minds of the American people with regards to health care.

The Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs hosted a symposium on Friday, Nov. 19 in Eggers Hall. The conference titled ‘Health Care: An Agenda for the Next Administration,’ brought together the Syracuse University community, activists, and political researchers to share and discuss the many issues the second Bush administration faces in health care during the next four years.

Of the six panelists, four of the presenters do research in the health care field. The other two are health care professionals, and commented on the presentations. The two primary topics of the presentations were how to provide health services for the uninsured and Medicare.

‘Covering the uninsured will cost about 8 billion dollars a year,’ said Mark Pauly, professor of health care systems at Wharton University of Pennsylvania. ‘But the president wants to spend the 8 billion dollars over 10 years.’

Pauly said that the real additional cost of care for the uninsured is just 25 percent of what it would cost to provide health care for the whole group, because they do pay for a portion of the care they receive.

‘Primarily it is the middle class that lacks health insurance,’ said Katherine Swartz, professor of health policy and management at the Harvard University School of Public Health. ‘This is increasingly becoming a middle-class problem due to changes in economy and employer-employee relationships.’

Swartz said that employer-employee relationships were a result of a changing economy and the cost of health care as an incentive, leading to a need to increase access to small group and individual insurance markets again. The premiums, which are the fees charged for coverage, are much higher and extremely expensive in small group and individual markets than in large groups, however.

Additionally, Swartz said that the government should provide policies for people whose coverage has lapsed, or those who do not have any. She added that the government should also insure insurers, share costs with the original insurer, and set up the programs to discourage policyholders from taking risks with the assumption that the policy will cover any damages or losses.

The second part of the symposium discussed the growing problems with Medicare. The aging of the baby boomer generation places a weight on the government with regards to Medicare, because the younger tax base has to finance their retirement.

‘The baby boomers in Medicare is not a crisis; the crisis would be if we didn’t have a program to cover the older people,’ said Jonathan Oberlander, assistant professor of political science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. ‘If you go to Canada or France, it’s not a big problem because they have a national plan.’

John Palmer, dean emeritus of the Maxwell School and a professor of economics and public administration, said that the rising cost of health care and the aging of the baby boomers is something that the second Bush administration must take into account when dealing with Medicare.

Palmer said his research showed a steep rise in projected Medicare expenditures, the income and cost rates of Social Security, the Medicare out-of-pocket expenses and new income-related premiums structured for Medicare. Palmer’s data suggests that all of these concerned topics are on the rise.

‘As we grow richer, we’re going to want to devote more money to a better quality of life,’ Palmer said.

Published on November 29, 2004 at 12:00 pm