Researcher Advocates Universal Health Care

A prominent researcher and health care policy-maker argued for a universal health care system for America yesterday at the Harvard School of Public Health (SPH).

Kenneth Olden, former director of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, spoke to a full lecture hall of about 50 people at SPH’s Boston campus. The lecture, entitled “Health Care in America: It Is Broken; It Can Be Fixed,” was the second in a SPH series that began last year on diversity and disparities in health.

Olden, a tall, bespectacled African-American with a resonant voice who was a researcher and instructor in physiology at the SPH in the 1970s, described an American health care system with massive investment, but poor results. Olden said that a recent World Health Organization (WHO) study showed that the U.S. devotes more money to health care than any of the 191 countries surveyed. The U.S. spends 14.1 percent of its GDP on health care, while countries like Switzerland, Canada, Germany, and France each spend around 10 percent.

At the rate expenditures are increasing, the U.S. will devote 100 percent of its GDP to health care by 2065.

Olden observed that General Motors, for example, spends more money on health care for its employees than on steel for its cars.

Despite high funding, American health care delivery ranked 37th in the WHO survey. Forty-one countries surveyed have better infant mortality rates than the U.S. If the nation’s infant mortality rate were as low as Cuba’s, 2,212 babies would be saved annually.

“The major contributor to the high cost of health care and the inefficiency in the system has to do with the individualized, doctor-patient model of health care,” Olden said. He criticized the fragmented, investigator-driven state of health research in America. More emphasis should be placed on making existing advancements available to everyone than on making new discoveries, he said.

“Millions of Americans do not have access to the state-of-the-art technologies that already exist,” he said. Olden argued that if Americans accept communal police, fire, education, and transportation services, they should be able to agree to universal health care as well.

In his view, the U.S. can achieve a universal system that still leaves people with choice by organizing a national regulatory body to set standards of care available for all. Citizens who want additional health coverage could purchase supplemental plans. “We have to decide what level of care is acceptable to us, but it doesn’t preclude you and I from buying more,” he said.

Olden said that with a universal system, the American health care ranking would correspond with the high level of investment. “More importantly, I think the uninsured and the under-insured would receive much better quality health care,” he said.

The audience responded warmly to his comments, and most who asked questions after his lecture agreed with his overall plan. Some wondered, however, how his vision could be achieved.

Olden responded that some leaders are speaking quietly about a universal health care plan, and emphasized the urgency of the situation.