Health Care Reform and the Future of American Medicine

Ezekiel J. Emanuel answers questions from the audience

Wednesday, January 25, 2012, 12:30 p.m. - 2 p.m. Central Time

Cowles Auditorium, Hubert H. Humphrey Center

Event Description

The United States spends more on health care than any other industrialized nation in the world. In 2009, the U.S. spent $ 2.53 trillion on health care, roughly the equivalent of France's entire GDP. Despite this spending, the United States is ranked 12th in life expectancy for males and 16th for females. Successive administrations have attempted comprehensive health care reform since 1912; President Obama's Affordable Care Act (ACA), passed in 2009–10, is the first to be enacted. In this talk, Prof. Zeke Emanuel, MD, PhD, former health care advisor for the Office of Management and Budget, described the pressing need for health care reform, the key innovations in the ACA, and how they are likely to impact the actual delivery of care. From improving efficiency with "inter-operable" electronic health records to restructuring care delivery to improve outcomes and lower cost, Prof. Emanuel provided an insider's view of the vision driving health care reform, the challenges looming, and the future of American medicine. After Dr. Emanuel's talk, commentator Prof. Stephen T. Parente, PhD, MPH, from the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management, offered a different perspective, followed by a moderated Q&A session.

Commentator

Stephen Parente, PhD, MPH
Associate Professor
Director of Medical Industry Leadership Institute
University of Minnesota

Continuing Education Information

Continuing legal education credit (CLE) for attorneys (1.5 hours) has been approved. Event ID: 162111.

The University of Minnesota is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

The University of Minnesota designated this live activity for a maximum of 1.5 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™. Physicians should only claim credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

Other Healthcare Professionals who participated in this CME activity may submit their Statements of Attendance to their appropriate accrediting organizations or state boards for consideration of credit. The participant is responsible for determining whether this activity meets the requirements for acceptable continuing education.

All participating faculty, course directors, and planning committee members were required to disclose to the program audience any financial relationships related to the subject matter of this program. Disclosure information was reviewed in advance in order to manage and resolve any possible conflicts of interest.

Sponsorship

Support for the Deinard Memorial Lecture on Law & Medicine comes from the law firm of Leonard Street and Deinard and the Deinard family. The series is co-sponsored by the University of Minnesota's Joint Degree Program in Law, Health & the Life Sciences and the Center for Bioethics.

Speaker Biography

Ezekiel J. Emanuel is Diane v.S. Levy and Robert M. Levy University Professor; Vice Provost for Global Initiatives; Penn Integrates Knowledge (PIK) Professor. His appointment is shared between the Department of Medical Ethics & Health Policy, which he chairs in Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine, and the Department of Health Care Management in the Wharton School, pending formal ratification by the School faculties, the Provost’s Staff Conference and the University trustees.

He is the former Chair of the Clinical Center Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health and served as a Special Advisor on Health Policy to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and National Economic Council until January 2011. Dr. Emanuel has been a Visiting Professor at numerous universities, including the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, UCLA, Johns Hopkins Medical School, Stanford Medical School, and New York University Law School. He is also a breast oncologist and author.

Dr. Emanuel received his MSc from Oxford University in Biochemistry, MD from Harvard Medical School, and PhD in political philosophy from Harvard University. His dissertation received the Toppan Award for the finest political science dissertation of the year. In 1987–88, he was a Program in Ethics and the Professions fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

After completing his residency in internal medicine at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital and his oncology fellowship at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, he joined the faculty at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Dr. Emanuel was an Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School before joining the National Institutes of Health. Dr. Emanuel served on President Clinton's Health Care Task Force, the National Bioethics Advisory Commission (NBAC), and on the bioethics panel of the Pan American Healthcare Organization.

In addition to numerous awards, including the AMA-Burroughs Welcome Leadership Award, the Public Service Award from the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the John Mendelsohn Award from the MD Anderson Cancer Center, a Fulbright Scholarship (which he declined), and election to the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Science, Association of American Physicians, and Royal College of Medicine (UK), Hippocrates Magazine selected him as Doctor of the Year in Ethics. In 2007 Roosevelt University presented Dr. Emanuel with the President's Medal for Social Justice.