Patients stand to lose under proposed healthcare bill

Atul Gawande, professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, director of Ariadne Labs, and a cancer surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, said patients stand to lose significantly under the Republican’s proposed healthcare bill and the plan is unlikely to attract healthy young people to become insured. He discussed his views in a March 13, 2017 interview on NPR’s All Things Considered.

The stakes for patients are “extremely high,” he said. The bill is at the “center of the debate [about] what our responsibilities are for covering people over the course of their lives.”

Gawande also discussed how his experience as a surgeon has changed after the first universal health care bill was passed in Massachusetts, how the Affordable Care Act (ACA) can be improved, and the issue of high medical costs. He said a few tweaks to the ACA would attract more young and healthy people to join the plan, which would help balance the costs of the sicker, older population and keep premiums down.

Listen to NPR’s All Things Considered interview: Surgeon On Health Care Bill: The Stakes Are ‘Extremely High’ For Patients

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(Harvard Chan School news)