The Journal

Issue date: 4/12/07 Section: News

Emerson

"Issues for the 21st Century," a new series from former Missouri Gov. Bob Holden's Public Policy Forum, premiered April 9 with an hour-long Q-and-A session on the future of rural American health care. The discussion was initiated by Missouri's eighth district U.S. Rep. Jo Ann Emerson.


More than 50 people crowded into the Emerson Library Faculty Education Center to hear the five-term Republican congresswoman speak, with Webster students sitting alongside former state legislators Emmy McClelland, Betty Sims and current state Rep. Kathlyn Fares (R-Webster Groves).


Throughout the session, Emerson highlighted problems within the American health care system, including a dearth of affordable health insurance and what could be done for the nation's 47 million uninsured citizens.


"We have an amazing lack of access to health care (in rural Missouri)," Emerson said. "We have counties that have nothing - no clinics, no medical doctors - nothing."


Emerson examined the positives and negatives of several suggestions for the near future, including socialized medicine and an open market, laissez-faire insurance system.


Webster University President Richard Meyers offered his opinion that nationalized health care was the only viable solution for the United States in the 21st century, and that necessary tax hikes would be worth universal coverage.


"If you don't have health care, you don't have anything," Meyers said.


Emerson agreed health care was a necessity, if not a right, but that universal health care would likely require such a paradigm shift in the United States that its citizens would be unprepared for it for years, if not decades. Even so, she said that to stay competitive with other countries throughout the century, the American system would have to switch to single-payer health care in order to accommodate the estimated $1.4 trillion prescription drugs that will cost for the retiring baby boomer generation.


"Blow up the system and start from scratch," Emerson said.


The event was the first in the speaker series, developed by former Missouri Gov. Bob Holden's Public Policy Forum and hosted by Holden himself. According to the Forum's Web site, attendees will "go beyond hot political issues and learn more about issues that will impact the global community far into our future."

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