Ben Sasse's Healthcare Policy Topics:
1) Why Politicians and Lobbyists Can’t Heal Healthcare
It is entirely understandable that the American people want explanations, solutions, and leadership. There is thus much discussion of reform in Washington. Unfortunately, little of this talk amounts to real change. Why not? Because the problems are actually even worse than the American people understand: When the baby boomers start to retire in 2011, we will begin a decline from 3.8 to 2.4 workers per beneficiary. Healthcare is already the largest sector of the U.S. economy and will soon be ballooning beyond any sustainable level. The three policy levers that are available that might address this crisis - provider reimbursement decreases, benefit cuts, or tax increases - are not the kinds of proposals politicians raise their hands to propose. And the only real solution - actual health sector innovation - is not something current payment systems can stimulate. The future will be both treacherous and fascinating.
2) The Entitlement Crisis: Worse Than You Think:
Both Wall Street and Main Street are worried about the federal deficit - and well they should be. Government spending as a percentage of GDP is projected to grow more this year than at any point in American history. Still, single-year deficits are not really that significant; we have run large annual deficits because of wars and economic downturns many times in our history. It is the deficit trends and the total national debt that matter. Unfortunately, these problems are even more frightening. Why? Because even though the subprime mortgage and the larger banking crises are at the forefront of our minds, the baby boomers' retirement - and especially their healthcare costs - present a much larger macroeconomic challenge than does the present crisis. With the main Medicare trust fund now only seven years from insolvency, Washington will eventually need to act. But it is not at all clear that Congress is up to the task. What are the possible options, what is likely, and what are the economic and political implications?
3) Faster Approvals, Less Secrecy, More Data – The FDA We Need
The FDA has an almost impossible job - keeping dangerous drugs from market, and simultaneously speeding life-saving drugs to market. The riddle, of course, is that these are often the same drugs. Reasonable people may differ over how the agency manages the trade-offs between its safety mission and its responsibility to help Americans gain access to possible new cures. But two things are not open to dispute: First, the FDA's overwhelming focus on pre-market, clinical trial data is an artifact of an era before database technology made it possible to do robust post-market surveillance of drug safety and effectiveness. No one would create this outdated approval process if we were building it from scratch with today's technologies. Second, personalized genetic information is transforming our understanding of how different drugs work - and on whom. This presents the opportunity for huge medical breakthroughs - and yet it too is a development for which today's FDA is woefully underprepared and underfunded. Unfortunately, instead of helping reform this agency in crisis, many in Congress seem content to grand-stand - making the agency is even more risk-averse. How can we embrace new technologies to enable the FDA to help more Americans get faster access to the latest drug and device innovations?
4) Bureaucracies Forever: Why Government Reform Always Fails
5) Comparative Effectiveness: How Do We Provide Higher-Quality Care Without Hamstringing Innovation?
6) Healthcare IT: The Promise, Perils and Politics of Higher-Quality, Lower Cost Care
7) The Future of Employer Sponsored Insurance – How to Create Truly Portable Health Insurance for the Knowledge Economy
About Benjamin Sasse:
Benjamin Sasse was recently Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation in the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Dr. Sasse served in HHS from 2007 through 2009. Nominated by President Bush and unanimously confirmed by the Democratic Senate to the fourth-ranking position in the government's largest-budget agency, Dr. Sasse led policy, planning, and research functions across the Department's eleven operating divisions, with a special focus on Medicare, Medicaid, and the Food and Drug Administration.
He is currently President of Midland Lutheran College. Dr. Sasse previously taught public policy at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas. His research examined efforts to modernize payment systems in American healthcare, to eventually migrate from "paying for more" to "paying for better" in ways that will stimulate entrepreneurial innovation from doctors, hospitals, and adjacent industries.
Dr. Sasse was educated at Harvard, Oxford, and St. John's (Annapolis) before receiving his Ph.D. from Yale, where his dissertation on domestic politics during the Cold War won the Theron Rockwell Field and the George Washington Egleston Prizes.
He has been an active advocate for the continued primary role of the private sector in healthcare coverage. His editorials on the current healthcare reform debate have been featured in Forbes, Investor’s Business Daily and the Wall Street Journal – see following examples:
Do Health Care Reformers Fear A Reading Public? by Senator John Cornyn and Benjamin Sasse (Forbes Magazine 9/8/09)
Is Government Health Insurance Cheap by Kerry Weems and Benjamin Sasse for Wall Street Journal
New Point Man On Health Reform Also Goes By The Name Emanuel