HSPH Professor John McDonough recently spoke to The Boston Globe about his new book Inside National Health Reform. McDonough, a former Massachusetts state legislator and executive director of the advocacy group Health Care for All, worked as a senior adviser on the U.S. Senate committee responsible for developing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the landmark health care reform plan that President Barack Obama signed into law in March 2010.
“I don’t think there is a single person in America who would say for a second that this was the best law that could have been envisioned. But this is closest to the best law that could have gotten through the Congress,” McDonough told the Globe. Describing the thousands of Americans who die or go bankrupt every year due to lack of health insurance, McDonough said, “There is no advanced society on the planet that treats their citizens this way except for the United States. This is an economic issue. It is a medical care issue, a health issue, and it is also a moral issue.”
Read the Globe article (Oct. 31, 2011)
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HSPH Center for Public Health Leadership
Why IS Health Care Reform So Elusive? (Harvard Public Health Review)
Health Care for (Almost) Everyone (Harvard Public Health Review)