Health Care

Last week I had the opportunity to hear Rosemarie Day, author of Marching Toward Health Coverage. How Women Can Lead the Fight for Universal Health Care, speak about the need to recognize health care as a right and create a sustainable and equitable health care system.

Health care is certainly not my area of expertise, but as a college president I grappled constantly with managing the escalating costs of benefits. We implemented every possible savings, including self-insurance, to contain costs, but given flat or reduced public support, we were still faced with decreasing benefits or increasing costs to employees. The annual increases in insurance either meant cuts elsewhere in the budget or decreasing the value of the meager salary increases we were able to afford.

When I retired from my last presidency, I quickly realized that my “golden years” were not so golden when it came to health care. With Medicare and supplemental and drug plans, I am now paying about triple what I paid when I had insurance through my employer, for less coverage. I have no retiree benefits.

I live in a rural area with a significant shortage of doctors and only because I have a car and can still drive am I able to access specialists over an hour away.  

Every part of our model is seriously flawed and may get worse if the Affordable Care Act is reduced or abolished, throwing 20 million people off their insurance plans.  

These issues have existed for years, but now we have the corona virus to illustrate exactly how our system jeopardizes all Americans. The 28 million uninsured Americans are the least likely to get tested or seek medical care if they develop symptoms. They are also the least able to afford staying home or to have jobs that enable them to work from home. Out of economic necessity, they will be in the workplace and on public transportation, spreading the disease.

I have often spoken about this country’s response to Sputnik, which was to invest in higher education, and asked why we did not develop a similar strategy after 9/11. Unfortunately, I have no confidence that this national health crisis will lead to systemic change. The virus will abate, and we will move on.  We can disagree about how to make changes in the system we have, but ensuring health care as a right, to the benefit of all Americans, should not be a partisan issue.