Feature

Shaping Presidential Policy

With the campaign season hurtling to an end, Daniel Levin Professor Tomas Philipson is busier than ever. In addition to being a full-time faculty member, Philipson serves on Senator John McCain's health care task force for his presidential campaign.

"We're helping the campaign both formulate policies, disseminate them, and talk about how these policies compare to [those of] Senator Obama," he explained. "The early work focused on very specific [questions and issues]. Now it's crunch time to let people know McCain's stances."

The task force, which Philipson joined in the spring, is made up of eight senior-level health care experts-ranging from a congressman to the former heads of government agencies to academics and think tank analysts.

"The issues are not specific in terms of each member's research, but more on current important issues related to making health insurance affordable," he said. According to Philipson, he brings a more quantitative expertise to the table as well as his extensive obesity research, which has been "helpful" since McCain understands the importance of preventative care.

"The four pillars that define the campaign are affordability, access and choice, portability and security, and quality," said Philipson. With McCain's plan, the government would help reduce insurance costs by offering families-including unemployed people-a $5,000 tax credit to buy health insurance, but would stop short of mandating coverage.

"We're trying to make health insurance affordable, but allow people choice and access," Philipson explained. "This is different from Medicare and Medicaid where the government is paying hospitals and dictating care for patients." Additionally, McCain would allow policies to be sold across state lines, thereby increasing competition between states and reducing the number of uninsured citizens. The plan would also allow tax credits to be carried from one employer to another, essentially severing the tax link between employers and health insurance.

"We agree with Obama on better management of chronic diseases, IT infrastructure, and the overall performance of the health care system," he explained. But McCain's plan primarily differs from that of his opponent-a model Philipson compared to the prevailing system in Europe-in that the government would not finance and oversee care.

"A big problem with going to the European version of care is that if the United States adopted this plan, world medical innovation slows down because the U.S. is where innovation-drug creation and testing-happens," said Philipson. With less new drugs and technology being created, younger generations will lose out on potential medical advancements.

In his role with the campaign, Philipson is now spending part of his time spreading the word about McCain's health care plan by conducting media interviews and speaking across the country. Philipson admitted, "Working on both my research and the McCain campaign is very straining, and will be more so this month."

But Philipson is excited by the opportunity and to contribute to what could be one of the most important elections in the nation's history.

The views expressed in this article do not reflect those of the Harris School or the University of Chicago. The Harris School and the University are non-partisan and do not endorse any candidates or their platforms.