Questions for Robert Goldberg
Tuesday, July 14 2009
Robert Goldberg, PhD*, is the policy expert for the panel discussion this Friday. He is against any form of government intervention in health care, and has defended our health care system by suggesting that “every American” has access to the same level of care as Senator Ted Kennedy. Dr. Goldberg works for the Center for Medicine in the Public Interest, a non-partisan think tank that is among the most vocal opponents of health care reform; CMPI is funded at least partially by the pharmaceutical industry.
So then, questions I would like to ask Dr. Goldberg:
(1) You’ve suggested – in jest, I think – that the “patriotic” thing for liberals to do is to join a public plan. I have often said, in all seriousness, I will be the first in line when such a plan is available to me. And in fact, there are plenty of other countries in which many or most citizens do feel their health care system is a point of national pride. I wonder if you could identify the specific features of the American system of government which you feel prevent it from being able to help provide health care to our citizens, and what we can do to address those flaws.
(2) On a similar note, I think we can agree the government is already involved in health care to a significant extent. Not just Medicare, but also agencies like the National Institutes of Health, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. Then there are the innumerable laws and regulations governing the licensing of physicians, certification of hospitals, prescription drugs, et cetera. From your perspective, which (if any) aspects of government involvement in health care are successful in helping and protecting patients, and why those and not others?
(3) One of my struggles as a patient has been getting reliable information about what works and what doesn’t. For example, I have taken expensive biological drugs, only to find out later they were no more effective and much more dangerous than cheap generics. You have written articles arguing against comparative effectiveness research, but apart from the government requiring such research, I don’t see that patients will ever have easy access to that sort of information. What do you propose as an alternative to CER?
*By the way, that PhD is in Politics – a fact missing from most of his bios. Of course, if I were him I’d be just as coy about my credentials.
