Prof. Ezekiel Emanuel enlightened and challenged on the topic of health care in America

Prof. Ezekiel Emanuel, MD, PhD, spoke to a packed house on January 25 for the Deinard Memorial Lecture on Law & Medicine. Instrumental in drafting the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the University of Pennsylvania professor, oncologist, and well-known bioethicist gave the yearly talk co-sponsored by the University of Minnesota's Joint Degree Program in Law, Health & the Life Sciences and Center for Bioethics.

Prof. Emanuel decried the cost of health care in the United States, explaining that our country spends $2.6 trillion on health care each year—up to 50 percent more per person than the two other highest spending countries, Norway and Switzerland. That expenditure is growing by 2 percent of GDP every year. "We obviously can't keep going in this direction, but we've been saying that about health care costs for the past 40 years," he said. And even with all this spending, "we're just not doing that good a job" when it comes to quality health care.

The Affordable Care Act aims to change that through, among other things, more coordinated care, improved and more efficient care for those with chronic diseases, and oversight of services to ensure that their use is evidence-based and leads to better outcomes.   Read more.