Pre-Medical Guest Writer
Cornell University
Jeffrey Ho is an undergraduate student at Cornell University's College of Human Ecology. He hopes to become an infectious disease physician and work in the public health field, and is currently interested in a wide range of health topics ranging from medical research to healthcare policy. In his free time he enjoys competitive swimming and playing water polo.
Universities have been profiting off students due to the capitalistic and flawed nature of our health care system. Regional hospital networks prevent students from utilizing their insurance elsewhere. With nowhere else to turn, they are forced to pay high premiums for the university plan.
As another ACA repeal looms in the near future — after ACHA and BCRA — the Graham-Cassidy-Heller-Johnson (Graham-Cassidy) legislation makes me think back to a patient I took care of a few months ago.
Intellectually, I understood the potential devastation that a lack of health insurance could bring to so many Americans. But it wasn’t until 2012 that I viscerally felt just how health care policies made in faraway Washington affected the lives of so many.
We are each entitled to our own opinions, but not our own facts. In his op-ed, Mr. Barsouk makes a number of statements that contradict the facts, eroding the credibility of his arguments. I hope to address the six most problematic statements here.
Our Health Policy student-leaders Aishwarya Rajagopalan and Adam Barsouk dissect the major policy changes of the ACA and the AHCA, offering their perspectives on the state of American health care.
The derailment of the American Health Care Act (AHCA) has given the supporters of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) much to be joyous about. But many are wondering what happens next in the healthcare debate.
The future of American health care remains uncertain. It was only a few weeks ago that the Affordable Care Act narrowly evaded the congressional guillotine a mere seven years after its installation.
On January 20, 2017, Donald J. Trump was inaugurated as the 45th President of the United States, giving control of the White House, the House and the Senate to the Republican Party. Congress is expected to move quickly on President Trump’s agenda: one of the top priorities is the repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
On a late March day in 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law. For many Americans, it was a day of celebration as they would finally be able to get the healthcare they needed at a price they could afford. For others it was a day of frustration and confusion, because even from the beginning it was apparent that this plan was not perfect. Over the past six years we have watched the success and failures of the bill as it was slowly put into action. In that time more than 20 million people have gained health insurance.
Obamacare subsidies were upheld Thursday as the Supreme Court issued its decision on King v. Burwell. Here is your two minute brief on what the decision means.
Vanilla Ice famously once said “Stop, Collaborate and Listen” in his 1989 song “Ice Ice Baby.” To the same token, we all can agree that we do not do enough of collaborating and listening when it comes to the issue of health care reform: it is a complex topic with no easy fix and one which has become divided on party lines.
What I have learned along the way is that many people find policy boring. Maybe they associate it with clips of C-SPAN they watched in middle school civics class, or perhaps it evokes the frustration felt when yet another health policy dies a silent death on a Congressional floor, but whatever the reason, policy is ascribed as a responsibility solely for politicians. This presents a massive conundrum because our interests as future clinicians cannot be represented if we are not the ones speaking to policymakers.
Writer-in-Training, Columnist and in-Training Staff Member
Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine
Aishwarya is a second year medical student at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. She relishes any opportunity to talk policy, social determinants of health, mental health parity and inclusion topics. Outside of school, Aishwarya enjoys yoga, green tea with lemon and copious amounts of dark chocolate.
Doctor of Policy
Doctor of Policy is a column dedicated to exploring and challenging contemporary health policy issues, especially in the fields of behavioral health, health care access, and inclusion, all from the eyes of a public health girl in a basic sciences world
