Inter-Faculty Group Gets Grant To Study Medicare Reforms

Concerned about the increasingly dire financial straits of the Federal Medicare program, a private foundation has donated $45,000 to a group of Harvard faculty to study how to save Medicare, expected to go bankrupt by 1990.

The Working Group of Medicare is one of six study and research groups that are part of Harvard's Division of Health Policy Research and Education, an interdisciplinary institution staffed by faculty from the Kennedy School of Government, the Medical School, and the School of Public Health (SPH).

"It's not a new study--we'll be studying data that already exists," said Professor of Health Policy and former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Julius B. Richmond, who is the chairman of the Medicare Group.

"We had in mind something like the Harvard Nuclear Study Group," said Dr. David Blumenthal, director of the K-School's Center for Health Policy and Management and one of the group's founders. He referred to a widely publicized 1983 study by Harvard faculty evaluating the nuclear arms race.

"What stood out [with the nuclear study] was the attempt by the University to write a study relevant to an ongoing policy issue of national importance--to be on the front burner," Blumenthal said.

Although the group has only been meeting for a month, members said they expected to have recommendations within a year. They have not yet determined to whom the suggestions will be made.

"[Medicare] is a Federal issue because it's a national problem, but it's implemented through intermediaries throughout the country," said Dean of the SPH Harvey Y. Pineberg '67, adding, "the results could have implications for implications for recommendations to physicians, hospitals, or to the government."

The group will not consider the possibility of scrapping Medicare, Blumenthal said. Instead, it will decide whether the government should not more stringent guidelines for coverage, underwriting fewer health services, or whether it should increase funding for the program.

Part of the grant money will be used to bring Washington policy-makers to address the group, Blumenthal said.

The faculty will examine issues ranging from the structure of the program itself and the specific needs of the elderly, to tax law, members said.