HSPH Director Supports Reform

To assuage concerns over the new health care law likely to take full effect within the next several years, Director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard School of Public Health John E. McDonough says that Americans should remain optimistic about the law’s implementation and its potential benefits for the public.

The Affordable Care Act was signed into law last March by President Barack Obama, extending insurance coverage to millions of Americans.

McDonough, who helped the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy’54-’56 draft the bill, cites the Obama administration’s management skills and flexibility and the “wave of innovation” energizing the United States as several of the reasons Americans should embrace health care reform.

“It seems to me that there was a lot of focus on the negative and the risks and the clouds,” McDonough said. “I wanted to provide some kind of summary of evidence pointing in the other direction.”

According to McDonough, an improving economy and lower federal deficit will prove advantageous for the law’s preservation. He added that the act faces no considerable constitutional challenges and that all the key sponsors have continued to maintain their support.

HSPH Professor of Health Policy and Political Analysis Robert J. Blendon said that people who feel apprehensive about the bill tend to fear that their insurance premiums, taxes, and the nation’s deficit will increase once the law takes full effect.

However, Blendon added that the law’s proponents say that the health care reform will cover millions of uninsured people, eliminate discrimination based on pre-existing conditions, and insurance policies will pay more of the needed services.

McDonough’s comments first appeared in a column last week for “Kaiser Health News” in which he said that he hoped to improve the public’s perception of the law for the congressmen and senators who worked to implement the reform.

Although McDonough said the health care law faces tremendous legal and political challenges, he wrote in the column that Americans can overcome “the most challenging implementation of a federal law since the civil rights laws of the 1960s.”

The column also addresses the public’s divided support of the health care bill—between 46 percent unfavorable and 46 favorable—but notes that only 21 percent of Americans support a full repeal, which has been proposed by the Republicans in Congress. The prospect of repeal poses a series of significant threats to many Americans, McDonough said.

“If this is law is repealed then 32 million Americans who are projected to be insured in the next several years will not be,” said McDonough. “Instead of having 23 million uninsured Americans we will be closing in on 50.”

—Staff writer Melanie A. Guzman can be reached at melanieguzman@college.harvard.edu.