Philosophy Department Sponsors Healthcare Debate
By Christopher Smith
The Department of Philosophy, Religion, and Humanities organized a panel on healthcare in an attempt to help the ACC community understand the multiple issues involved in the government-led overhaul of healthcare.
The panel, held December 2 at Eastview, featured speakers Bill Darling, a partner at the Strasburger law firm, ACC Philosophy Professor Don Becker, and Archie Alexander, a physician and attorney. “We thought it would be a great idea to have a general discussion of the aptly–named landscape of healthcare,” said Matthew Daude Laurents, Philosophy department chair. Daude Laurents said he’d heard many people worrying about the current healthcare debate and decided the department could get involved.
“There is a distinction between the fundamental issues that we are grappling with and what, for a variety of different motives, good and maybe not so good, people are using those issues to accomplish,” said Daude Laurents, expressing hope that the discussion would “prompt genuine analysis and reflection.”“I’m impressed,” said Bill Darling, the first speaker of the night, as he looked over a packed auditorium. “I thought seven, maybe eight people would show up on a cold, rainy night.”
Darling, who splits his time between Austin and Washington D.C., spoke to the audience about the importance of the healthcare debate, what Congress has done so far, and what is yet to happen in the political arena.
Darling spoke of the bills in the House and the Senate and of the hurdles the bills still faced. Darling said that, while the White House is pushing for a bill to be voted on this year, the debate is likely to last into January or February. Even a combined House and Senate bill passed immediately would not be fully put into operation until 2018, Darling said.
“This is the most important thing that is going to happen in your lifetime,” Darling told the audience made up in large part by students. “You’re the ones it is going to affect. Not old guys like me.”
Professor Don Becker used his time at the podium to speak about what role, if any, the government should have in dealing with healthcare reform.
“We can’t answer the question of the government’s role in healthcare without answering the question of the role of government in general,” said Becker to begin his talk and then dove into a discussion of the role of the state and of the responsibilities of the individual in that state. At the end of his exploration Becker said he could find no compelling philosophical reason why the government should be involved in fixing or taking charge of healthcare but that “morality requires me to help provide [healthcare] for others.”
Becker left the audience with a question: “If we take the state out of the process are we going to be moved … to actually meet those needs of people, or are we just going to wait for the next person to make the charitable contributions that are required?”
The final speaker of the night was Archie Alexander, who spoke from the perspective of both an attorney and a physician.
“Doing nothing is not an option,” Alexander repeatedly told the audience. Alexander explained how healthcare costs have consistently gone up but that the outcome of services received by patients have not improved. Alexander explained that the U.S. per capita expenditure on healthcare has risen steadily, but outcomes, measured in survival rates, are no better than nations that spend considerably less per capita.
The nation is facing tough choices and healthcare cost will continue to rise said Alexander. There will have to be some sort of change he explained, but he admitted he was not sure what that change would look like.
“I’m not going to tell you how we are going to get out of this because I have no clue,” said Alexander.
Carlos Justin Guerra, a history major at ACC, came to the event hoping to get a better grasp on the healthcare debate. Guerra explains that his father is ill and that having to deal with hospitals and healthcare costs has made him realize the importance of the current debate.
“It’s easy for kids my age to think this is no big deal,” said Guerra but by coming to the panel discussion he realized that the issues being discussed now would affect him later on in life and it is important to pay attention now.
“We are living history right now with the big reform,” said Guerra. “It is going to be very interesting to see that unfold in my life. In the future, if I hope to teach history, this is probably something I am going to be teaching in my textbooks.”
