Families USA Executive Director Ron Pollack spoke at the Harvard School of Public Health as part of the Decision-making: Voices from the Field leadership discussion series February 4, 2014. Watch the entire series at http://hsph.me/voices.
00:06 Introduction to Ron Pollack
03:00 Ron Pollack discusses how he came into his career in social justice
08:50 What is consumer advocacy, what does an advocate do, and what role does Families USA play? What is distributive justice?
11:50 Is the Affordable Care Act (ACA) part of distributive justice?
13:07 What lies ahead for the ACA?
16:00 Where there is room for improvement in the ACA
17:50 Immigration reform and health care
22:26 Minimum wage and health care access for low-income Americans
30:00 Impact of a recent bill to cut the food stamp program
31:53 How do you decide what issues to advocate for?
33:50 Lessons from the ACA Rollout
37:27 Impact of the tea party movement on the ACA
40:50 Health for low-income Americans—Oregon Medicaid Experiment
44:40 Cost of medications under the ACA
46:03 ACA and rising health care costs—where is the conversation going?
51:36 What will happen when congress members who are champions of the ACA leave congress soon?
55:50 What topics will dominate the discussion in 2016 in the political and health spheres?
The Decision-making: Voices from the Field webcast leadership discussion series at Harvard School of Public Health invites leaders to speak about their experiences making decisions that affect global health. Highly interactive and candid, the series is produced in The Leadership Studio for a student audience. The high-definition webcast is streamed live and posted for future viewing. Students learn from experienced leaders about decisions that were effective, decisions that failed, and which decisions, if any, could have been made differently.
Ron Pollack is the Founding Executive Director of Families USA, the national organization for health care consumers whose mission is to achieve high-quality, affordable health coverage for everyone in the U.S. Families USA’s numerous reports and analyses are frequently cited at Congressional hearings, in state legislatures, by the media, and by consumer organizations nationwide. Mr. Pollack is the Founding Board Chairman of Enroll America, an organization composed of very diverse stakeholders working together to secure optimal enrollment of uninsured people through effective implementation of the Affordable Care Act. In 1997, Mr. Pollack was appointed by President Clinton as the sole consumer representative on the Presidential Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality in the Health Care Industry. In that capacity, he helped prepare the Patients’ Bill of Rights that has been enacted by many state legislatures. Mr. Pollack received his law degree from New York University.