Transcripts

"Commentary"-Ways The Next Administration Can Cure Healthcare

SUSIE GHARIB: Tonight's commentator wants President-Elect Obama to tackle health care costs head on. She's Alice Rivlin, senior fellow at Brookings and former vice chair of the Federal Reserve.

ALICE RIVLIN, SENIOR FELLOW, BROOKINGS: In his campaign, candidate Obama promised to fix the two biggest problems of American health care: making our wasteful, expensive system more efficient and covering the uninsured. But the new president now finds himself facing the worst recession in decades and some are advising him to put health care on hold until the economy recovers. Nonsense, this is exactly the right moment for comprehensive health reform. The ranks of the uninsured are swelling. Fear of losing health coverage is making consumers anxious and afraid to spend. Part of restoring confidence is assuring workers that they will not lose their health insurance even if they lose their jobs. Moreover, slowing the growth of health spending requires substantial investment in the skills, knowledge and infrastructure needed to make care more efficient, including information technology and analysis of which drugs and treatments are worth the cost and which are not. Well planned investment in a more effective health system is at least as important to economic recovery as investment in transportation and communications. The great depression made Social Security possible by dramatizing the plight of the elderly. This recession dramatizes the challenges to our health system. There will never be a better moment to launch comprehensive health care reform. I'm Alice Rivlin.