Hillary Clinton Tries to Sell Scientists on Health Reform : Medicine: And she learns at the meeting that increased knowledge of genetics could make more Americans uninsurable under the current system.
After three days of marathon congressional testimony, First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton took her health care reform message to some of the nation’s most prominent scientists Friday--and learned a lesson from a woman who helped lead the search for the gene that causes Huntington’s disease.
“I’m uninsurable,” Nancy Wexler whispered to the First Lady before receiving an award for organizing an international effort that culminated with the gene’s discovery in March. She explained that her mother had Huntington’s disease, that she is at risk for the fatal hereditary disorder and that she would lose her health coverage if she switched jobs.
Moreover, she told Mrs. Clinton, as medical research progresses and new genetic discoveries are made, more and more Americans will be in the same situation unless the health care system is reformed. The First Lady wasted no time in picking up on her remarks.
“It is likely that in the next years, every one of us will have a pre-existing condition and be uninsurable,” Mrs. Clinton told the crowd, relaying what Wexler had said. “That is a stunning, brilliant revelation. . . . What will happen as we discover those genes for breast cancer, or prostate cancer or osteoporosis or any of the thousands of other conditions that affect us as human beings?”
The First Lady’s remarks drew a warm response from the audience of 350 gathered at the Pierre Hotel on 5th Avenue, particularly after she pledged that the Administration would devote more money to medical research--although she offered no specifics.
“It was reassuring to hear you emphasize the importance of medical research,” Dr. Michael DeBakey, chancellor of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, told Mrs. Clinton after her speech.
Earlier, DeBakey had complained that because academic medical centers are often supported through fees that university doctors charge their patients, funding would inevitably decrease if the price controls the President is proposing are enacted. He said that he saw the Clinton plan as “a threat” to medical research.
The First Lady had come to New York to witness the awarding of the Albert Lasker Medical Research Awards, prestigious honors viewed within the research community as precursors to a Nobel Prize.
The awards went to cell biologist Gunter Blobel, who pioneered discoveries in workings of proteins, and biologist Donald Metcalf, who discovered hormones that regulate the formation of white blood cells. Wexler, a psychologist at Columbia University, was honored for public service, as was former Florida Rep. Paul G. Rogers, who played a key role in passing health care legislation in the 1970s.
In addition to stressing the Administration’s commitment to research, Mrs. Clinton predicted Friday that there would be a congressional fight over keeping mental health coverage and substance abuse rehabilitation in the plan. She urged her audience to “stand with us on this issue.”
For the most part, however, she hit on the same broad themes that she and the President have sounded since he announced his health care reform package last week--universal coverage, streamlining bureaucracy, improving quality of care.
