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Congresswoman Nancy Johnson at EPH as John D. Thompson Distinguished Visiting FellowOn February 22-23, the Health Management Program (HMP) hosted Congresswoman Nancy L. Johnson, a Republican from Connecticut’s Fifth Congressional District, as the John D. Thompson Distinguished Visiting Fellow of 2004.
Johnson was first elected to Congress in 1982, and was re-elected to serve an eleventh term in 2002. Through her work on the Ways and Means Health Subcommittee, she became a nationally recognized leader in health care reform. In January 2001, Johnson was named Chairwoman of the Health Subcommittee. She has successfully sponsored legislation to guarantee health insurance to millions of American children and has been a co-author of reimbursement reforms to strengthen community hospitals and home health agencies, and extend Medicare coverage to cancer clinical trials. She co-authored the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act of 2003 (2003 Medicare Act), which was signed into law last fall.
At the award dinner held on Sunday, February 22, Johnson delivered an address entitled “Transforming Medicare for the 21st Century: Prescription Drugs and Disease Management,” before an audience of approximately eighty students, alumni, local health administrators and faculty. On Monday, Johnson met with Dean Michael Merson, faculty members and groups of students. In addition, she had lunch with students and spoke to students and Robert Wood Johnson Scholars in a Division of Health Policy and Administration (HPA) Microeconomics class. Beth Higa, an ’05 MPH student in HMP
(a program within HPA), said that students were “very inspired by [Johnson’s] years of political service and are impressed with her dedication to ensuring that health care reform remains at the top of the nation’s agenda.” Johnson’s class presentation centered on her work in co-authoring
the 2003 Medicare Act. She told students that “legislation is very,
very much a product of our moment in time.” She noted that many
of the basic systems in American healthcare, such as the payment system
by which Medicare reimburses healthcare providers, were put in place 20
years ago and are “shorting out.” While she spends most of
her time modernizing the law, she said that the U.S. is on the verge of
creating a new body of health policy in response to the current challenges
in healthcare and health administration. She said that while the federal
government’s role in healthcare has traditionally been largely one
of providing access, that role is changing rapidly. One example of the
change is the 2003 Medicare Act’s use of means adjustment to determine
the level of prescription drug benefits a recipient will get. Johnson
argued that the fundamental shift to means adjusted benefits are necessary
because in twenty years, if no adjustments are made to Medicare, Medicaid
and Social Security, three-quarters of all federal revenue will go to
people over 65 years of age, leaving the federal government unable to
provide its many other vital services. Johnson’s passion for and
concern about healthcare and health administration were evident as she
exhorted students to become involved in this era of both great possibilities
opened up by research and the great challenges of the fragility of the
healthcare delivery system.
The John D. Thompson Distinguished Visiting Fellow program honors Professor John D. Thompson and his distinguished contribution as an educator and researcher in health administration, including his pioneering work in developing the Medicare payment system. The fellowship brings a leader in health administration to EPH to share their career experiences with students and discuss emerging challenges in health administration. Recent John D. Thompson Distinguished Visiting Fellows include Gail Wilensky, Ph.D., Senior Scientist at Project HOPE (2003), Elaine Ullian, M.P.H., President and CEO of Boston City Hospital (2002) and Gail Warden, President and CEO of the Henry Ford Health System (2001). -Story by Christy Gordon. |
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