Transcripts

"Commentary"-Life Without Health Care Reform

SUZANNE PRATT: With all the talk about health care reform, tonight's commentator asks what happens if nothing happens? He's Steven George Ullmann, director of health sector management and policy at the University of Miami.

STEVEN ULLMANN, PROF., UNIV. OF MIAMI, SCHOOL OF BUS. ADMIN.: Let's contemplate for a moment. What happens if health care reform, whatever that reform would or could have been, fails? What would actually happen? First off, the number of uninsured will likely grow from our current 47 million to 67 million by the year 2018, putting tremendous strain on providers of health care. Health care expenditures are growing at a rate of nearly 7 percent annually. As such, health care will make up one of every $5 of economic activity in eight years. We will spend over $12,000 for every man, woman and child in the U.S. and, in some cities, $25,000 per person per year. It will take a much smarter person than me to figure out how this country can be competitive in a global economy with health care expenditures at these levels. We have heard warnings that current reform proposals involve health care rationing. But in the absence of health care reform, rationing will, by definition, come about, not as a result of any quote death panels, though that has never been a part of any of the current health care reform proposals. Rather, rationing will occur as a result of the inability of many firms to afford health insurance for their employees and the inability of individuals to afford health care or the insurance they need to offset those costs. If meaningful health care reform fails, as it did 16 years ago, I fear we will be sitting with our children, wondering why more was not done back in 2009 to prevent the collapse of our health care system, the resulting decline in our nation's financial health and most importantly, the significant toll on our population's physical and emotional health. I am Steve Ullmann.