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March 23 , 2005
Today, 45 million Americans lack health insurance. Millions more are struggling to pay premiums that are growing five times faster than wages, but are still seeing their benefits shrink. As a result, some Americans have access to the most sophisticated medical care in the world, while others are left to overcrowded emergency rooms, under-funded clinics, or no health care at all because they lack the insurance it takes to provide for the care they need. These injustices are inconsistent with Americans’ respect for human dignity and commitment to opportunity for all. Unlocking our health care system’s potential for everyone in America is the great moral challenge of our time.
Video & Transcript
• John Iglehart: Video
• John D. Podesta: Video
• Dr. James J. Mongan: Video
• Reverend William J. Byron, S.J.: Video
• Walter B. Maher: Video
• Dr. Ezekiel J. Emanuel: Video
• Dr. Jeanne Lambrew: Video
• Q&A Session: Video
• Transcript: Full text (PDF)
Note: All video provided in QuickTime (MPEG-4) format.
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| Panelists |
 John Iglehart is the Editor of Health Affairs, a bimonthly policy journal that he founded under the aegis of Project HOPE. During this same period, Iglehart also served as National Correspondent of The New England Journal of Medicine, for which he wrote more that 100 essays called Health Policy Report. Although Iglehart still contributes occasionally to TNEJM, he resigned its national correspondency at the end of 1996 to devote more time to Health Affairs, which increased its frequency of publication from four to six times a year, effective January 1997. Health Affairs, a peer-reviewed, multidisciplinary journal, is the largest circulation health policy periodical published in the United States. It has subscribers in 25 foreign countries as well. Before 1981, he was a Vice President of the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Director of its Washington, D.C. office. During the decade 1969 to 1979, he held a variety of editorial positions, including the editorship, at the National Journal, a privately published weekly on federal policymaking. Iglehart was elected to membership in the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 1977 and served on its Governing Council for six years (1985-1991). He also is an elected member of the National Academy of Social Insurance. He holds a degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and has been a journalist-in-residence at Harvard University. |
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 John Podesta is the President and CEO of the Center for American Progress and visiting Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center. Podesta served as Chief of Staff to President William J. Clinton from October 1998 until January 2001, where he was responsible for directing, managing, and overseeing all policy development, daily operations, Congressional relations, and staff activities of the White House. He coordinated the work of cabinet agencies with a particular emphasis on the development of federal budget and tax policy, and served in the President’s Cabinet and as a Principal on the National Security Council. From 1997 to 1998 he served as both an Assistant to the President and Deputy Chief of Staff. Earlier, from January 1993 to 1995, he was Assistant to the President, Staff Secretary and a Senior Policy Adviser on government information, privacy, telecommunications security and regulatory policy. Podesta previously held a number of positions on Capitol Hill including: Counselor to Democratic Leader Senator Thomas A. Daschle; Chief Counsel for the Senate Agriculture Committee; Chief Minority Counsel for the Senate Judiciary Subcommittees on Patents, Copyrights, and Trademarks; Security and Terrorism; and Regulatory Reform; and Counsel on the Majority Staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Podesta is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center and Knox College. |
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 James J. Mongan, M.D., is President and Chief Executive Officer of Partners HealthCare, a position he assumed on January 1, 2003. He is also Professor of Health Care Policy and Professor of Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School. From 1996-2002, Dr. Mongan served as President of Massachusetts General Hospital, the largest and oldest teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School. MGH is consistently ranked among the top few hospitals in the nation and oversees the largest research program of any hospital or medical center in the United States. Before his tenure at MGH, Dr. Mongan served 15 years as Executive Director of the Truman Medical Center in Kansas City and as Dean of the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Medicine. Prior to that, he spent 11 years in Washington, D.C. He served as a staff member of the United States Senate Committee on Finance for seven years, working on Medicare and Medicaid legislation, and he served in the Carter Administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Health and then at the White House as Associate Director of the Domestic Policy Staff. Dr. Mongan is a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He chairs the Commonwealth Fund Health Care Reform Program Advisory Committee. He is Chair of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and is a Board Member of the Eastern Massachusetts Urban League. He has served on the Board of Trustees of the American Hospital Association, the Kaiser Family Foundation and was a member of the Prospective Payment Assessment Commission of the US Congress. A native of San Francisco, Dr. Mongan received his undergraduate education at the University of California, Berkeley and Stanford University, and his medical degree from Stanford University Medical School. He completed his internship at Kaiser Foundation Hospital in San Francisco and served two years in the public health service. |
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 The Reverend William J. Byron, S.J., is Research Professor at the Sellinger School of Business, Loyola College in Maryland. From August 2000 until June 2003, he was Pastor of Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Washington, DC. From 1992 to 2000, he taught “Social Responsibilities of Business” in the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University, where he held an appointment as Distinguished Professor of the Practice of Ethics and served as Rector of the Georgetown Jesuit Community. From 1982-1992, he was President of The Catholic University of America. Prior assignments include service as President of the University of Scranton (1975-82), Dean of Arts and Sciences at Loyola University of New Orleans (1973-75), and various teaching positions in his field of economics and social ethics. He holds a doctorate in economics from the University of Maryland, two theology degrees from Woodstock College, and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and master’s in economics from Saint Louis University. He was the 1999 recipient of the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities’ Theodore M. Hesburgh Award for his contributions over the years to the advancement of Catholic higher education. In that same year he received the Council of Independent Colleges’ Academic Leadership Award. He is the recipient of 25 honorary degrees. A native of Pittsburgh, Father Byron grew up in Philadelphia, where he attended St. Joseph’s Preparatory School. After service in the Army’s 508th Parachute Infantry Regiment in 1945-46, he attended Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia for three years before entering the Jesuit order in 1950. He was ordained a priest in 1961. |
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 Walter B. Maher retired as the Vice President of Public Policy for DaimlerChrysler Corporation in July 2000. Located in Washington, D.C., he was principally involved in the development of corporate policy regarding the many national issues facing the company. In particular, for over 20 years he was a spokesperson for the company on major health reform issues, and frequently testified before House and Senate Committees on matters concerning health costs and the uninsured. Since his retirement, he has remained an active member of the National Coalition on Health Care, the largest coalition of organizations working for system-wide health care reform, the National Academy of Social Insurance, and is a member of the Health Care Experts Working Group of the New America Foundation in Washington, DC. Mr. Maher received his B.A. from Georgetown University in 1959, and his LL.B., also from Georgetown, in 1963. He was born in Los Angeles, California and resides in McLean, Virginia. |
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 Jeanne Lambrew is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress and an Associate Professor at George Washington University where she teaches health policy and conducts policy-relevant research on the uninsured, Medicaid, Medicare, and long-term care. Lambrew worked on health policy at the White House from 1997 through 2001, as the program associate director for health at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and as the senior health analyst at the National Economic Council. In these roles, she helped coordinate health policy development, evaluated legislative proposals, and conducted and managed analyses and cost estimates with OMB, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Treasury Department, the Labor Department and other relevant agencies. She was the White House lead on drafting and implementing the Children’s Health Insurance Program and helped develop the president’s Medicare reform plan, initiative on long-term care, and other health care proposals. She also worked at the Department of Health and Human Services during the 1993-1994 health reform efforts, and coordinated analyses of budget proposals in 1995. Prior to serving at the White House, Lambrew was an assistant professor of public policy at Georgetown University (1996). She received her masters and Ph.D. from the Department of Health Policy, School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and bachelor’s degree from Amherst College. |
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