For anyone still questioning the need for health reform in this faltering economy, Jonathan Gruber, MIT professor and a health care adviser to the Obama campaign, has an excellent op-ed in today's New York Times.

Gruber carefully lays out the potenial role health reform can play in jump starting the economy.

Expanding SCHIP and Medicaid would help free up state budgets to undertake important infrastructure projects that would boost employment. Investing in health IT and primary care will not only improve quality and lower costs but will also create jobs along the way. Providing Americans stable secure health insurance will boost consumer confidence and spending since "previously uninsured families would no longer need to save every extra penny to cover a medical emergency." Gruber should know. He's done the work to prove it, finding that Medicaid raised the consumption of eligible families by $538.

On the challenge of controlling health care cost growth, Gruber argues "cost control would be easier in an environment of universal coverage," noting that the Netherlands and Switzerland have achieved universal coverage with a private health insurance system that is much more adept at controlling costs than ours.

Gruber concludes:

These are challenging times. The economic crisis of 2008 has left politicians of all stripes in shock and unsure where to move next. But rather than sit back and lick our wounds, we must move toward healing them. Fundamental health care reform that features universal insurance coverage is an important place to start.

 

 

 

 

He's not alone. On the radio Marketplace's Chris Farrell argued earlier today that investing in health reform is the right thing to do to to stimulate the economy and provide relief to "Main Street." Over at TNR's The Plank, Jonathan Cohn, seconds Gruber's argument that health reform is good for the economy:

Here's one, slightly oversimplified way to think of it: Health care reform would help the economy in the short term—by increasing spending on medical care. It would also help the economy in the long term—by reducing spending on medical care. Pretty neat, huh?

 

 

 

 

More than neat, health reform is a necessity. To hear more about how reform efforts may move forward in the next administration come to New America's event Friday, December 5 on: Social Policy After the Economic Crisis.