Guest Lecturer: Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel
Prominent NIH Chair Joins Pritzker Professors to Discuss Health Care Reform
By Colleen Denny, MS1
(left to right) Drs. Ezekiel Emanuel, Elmer Abbo, Christopher Masi, and Matthew Wynia
Throughout this exciting and electric election season, the problems of the struggling US health care system have become a topic of national discussion, both for candidates and voters. And who better to plunge into these discussions than the medical students who will make their careers in the future health care system?
On Friday, August 29th, the new Pritzker Class of 2012 was treated to a panel presentation involving some of the most prominent voices calling for health care reform in the United States. As part of the first-year Health Care Disparities in America experience, students spent the prior week discussing the economic aspects of the American health care system as well as its repercussions for patient health. The four-way panel discussion marked the culmination of the week’s coursework and included Assistant Professor of Hospital Medicine Dr. Elmer Abbo, who has worked with Pritzker and the University law school in his efforts to enable health care reform, and Dr. Matthew Wynia, Director of the Institute for Ethics at the American Medical Association. They were joined by Dr. Christopher Masi, Assistant Professor of Medicine, an outspoken supporter of a single-payer system of healthcare. Also on the panel was Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the Chair of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Emanuel, an oncologist, is known nationally as the primary creator and proponent of a health care voucher plan for the US, which he laid out in his recent book, Healthcare, Guaranteed: A Simple, Secure Solution for America. His time over the past few months has been split between working directly with policy makers in Washington, DC and traveling the country building support for the voucher plan among various groups. The four panelists spent two hours discussing their preferred visions of a reformed health care system in the US, taking questions from students and one another.
The MS1 students took full advantage of the panel, asking about everything from gritty details of individual reform plans to the political feasibility of any kind of health care reform in the current political system. “I loved it. It was very interesting seeing such different points of view,” said Matt Elliot, a first-year student from Alabama. Kyle Karches, a classmate, seconded his appreciation for the panel’s diverse politics: “I liked that the panelists didn’t agree on the solution—their discussion was more interesting than it could otherwise have been.” Dr. Monica Vela, Director of the Health Care Disparities Initiative, was pleased with both the students’ engagement and the caliber of the discussion. Even Dr. Emanuel, writing in an email after the panel, was impressed with the enthusiasm the class showed about issues of health care reform even early in their medical careers. “I hope they keep up their inquisitiveness and commitment,” he wrote. “It was a great deal of fun.”
