Health Policy and the Affordable Care Act

This course will explore the many problems of the American health care system and discuss the specific ways that the Affordable Care Act will impact access, quality, costs, as well as medical innovation.

About the Course

The American health care system has many problems. 50 million people are uninsured. Quality is extremely uneven, with peaks of greatness at leading academic centers but overall poor quality in both process measures and outcomes such as asthma deaths. Finally, the U.S. health care system spends over $8000 per patient per year, nearly double the next highest country. In March 2010, the Affordable Care Act was enacted. Over the next decade or more, the Act will dramatically re-structure the American health care system.

This course will explore the history and structure of the current American health care system, including the history of and problems with employment-based health insurance, the challenges surrounding access, cost and quality, and the medical malpractice conundrum. The course will then explore the history of health care reform and the challenges that were overcome to achieve health reform in America. Finally, we will delineate the specific ways that the Affordable Care Act improves access and quality, and will control costs. Throughout lessons regarding health economics, health policy, and medical practice will be elucidated.

This class is open to anyone that is interested in gaining a better understanding of the US health care system and the challenges of health care reform. There are no prerequisites or required knowledge of the health system.

About the Instructor(s)

Ezekiel J. Emanuel is the Vice Provost for Global Initiatives, the Diane v.S. Levy and Robert M. Levy University Professor, and Chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. From January 2009 to January 2011, he served as special advisor for health policy to the director of the Office of Management and Budget in the White House. From 1997 to 2011, he was chair of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health. He is also a breast oncologist. Dr. Emanuel received his M.D. from Harvard Medical School and his Ph.D. in political philosophy from Harvard University. After completing his internship and 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 Harvard Medical School. He has since been a visiting professor at UCLA, the Brin Professor at Johns Hopkins Medical School, the Kovitz Professor at Stanford Medical School and visiting professor at New York University Law School. Dr. Emanuel has written and edited 9 books and over 200 scientific articles. He is currently a columnist for the New York Times. He appears regularly on television including Morning Joe, Real Time with Bill Maher, and Hardball with Chris Matthews.

FAQ

• Will I get a Statement of Accomplishment after completing this class?

  Yes. Students who successfully complete the class will receive a Statement of Accomplishment signed by the instructor.

Provided by:

University: University of Pennsylvania

Instructor(s): Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, PhD