Universal Health Insurance Coverage: Progress and Issues. Twenty-first Annual Herbert Lourie Memorial Lecture on Health Policy.

Abstract

Jonathan Gruber was a key architect of Massachusetts’ ambitious health reform effort, and in 2006 became an inaugural member of the Health Connector Board, the main implementing body for that effort. He delivered this lecture on October 2, 2009, and his references are to Congressional bills that were under consideration on that date. He laid out the universal coverage debate that’s gone on for a long time in the United States; described a new solution that he think they found for Massachusetts; described how the Massachusetts reform works; and how it can be extended nationally. Finally he spent time on the key issues that Congress is facing in fall 2009 trying to take this model to the national level.health care reform, universal coverage, tax credits, minimum benefits, rationing, employer-sponsored insurance benefits, ESI, cost control, affordability, Massachusetts, employer responsibility, incremental universalism, individual mandate, shared responsibility, pooling, affordability, single payer, public option