When Dr.
Harris stated that he would not be talking about healthcare as a human right,
but rather his experiences as an astronaut and as an investor interested in new
innovations in healthcare technologies, I was somewhat disappointed. After all, as a student, my perspective on healthcare
and how the goal of providing universal access to healthcare can be realized is
clearly limited, and I believed that Dr. Harris who has had experience as a
physician-astronaut-entrepreneur could provide further insight. Despite this sudden change of events, I
remained optimistic that Dr. Harris’s lecture would help me and all the other
students interested in entering the field of health care something new about
how the monster that is universal health care could be tackled in the US.
However,
Dr. Harris’s lecture was more of a pep talk than an insightful lecture. He spoke about his journey to become an
astronaut in the midst of the civil rights movement and his subsequent
accomplishments as an entrepreneur and the founder of the Harris Foundation. His life story was quite inspiring, and it
was interesting to see how he became involved in such vastly different fields. But although such a lecture has its benefits,
it sharply contrasted with my expectations, and I feel that he did not delve
into some areas he touched upon as much as I had hoped.
For
example, as the director of Vesalius Ventures, it was obvious how much hope Dr.
Harris had for future technology in the context of healthcare, and he seemed
excited about the examples he showed.
However, he did not address some pretty glaring issues considering these
technologies. The US tends to use
expensive medical technologies more than other countries. Expensive procedures like hip and knee
replacements and diagnostic imaging like MRI, CT, and PET scans are used far
more than other countries. Furthermore,
these technologies are not only used more in the US, but usage of these
technologies is often times more expensive.
(Of course, this issue a ubiquitous aspect of US healthcare – procedures
costs are highly variable across the US and are higher than other countries
even when controlling for relative wealth of the US and pharmaceuticals are
often much more expensive in the US than in other countries.) Not only that, the increase in availability
of technologies like diagnostic imaging has not only not led to a decrease in the
cost of using these technologies, but in many cases, costs have gone up. These trends lead me to believe that the new
technologies would be just as expensive, just as overused, and ultimately just
as inaccessible to people as current technologies. If anything, it seems like the rise of new,
expensive technologies will contribute to the disparity that exists between the
levels of healthcare that the upper and lower class have access to.
Overall, I
believe that Dr. Harris’s lecture was a pep talk, and not much more. He did not provide any insight into
healthcare as a human right, nor did he address how exactly technology will
improve the state of healthcare in the US.
While he seemed like an interesting person and had interesting points in
his discussions leading up to the lecture, I feel that Dr. Harris’s lecture
largely failed to meet our expectations concerning what we would learn from him
about Science and the Common Good.
