Alice Rivlin speaks on getting the health care system right

The health care system will never be perfect.

But reasonable reforms to the health care system are necessary for its effectiveness, said Alice Rivlin, founding director of the Congressional Budget Office.

Rivlin delivered the annual Thomas Willis Lambeth Lecture in Public Policy on Thursday, titled “Health Reform: Will We Ever Get it Right?”

“We will never have a health care system that will give us everything we want,” Rivlin said.

“This highly dynamic system is growing and shows no sign of slowing down,” she said. “Medical systems are more effective than they used to be, and people are leading more dynamic lives.”

Richard Andrews, a public policy professor, said the lecture is timely due to unfinished health care reforms.

“It seemed like a wonderful opportunity,” Andrews said.

“She’s an important policy scholar and has had a lot of influence with people all across the political spectrum.”

Addressing more than 300 people in Gerrard Hall, Rivlin covered topics ranging from the Affordable Care Act to the current political atmosphere.

“The world’s economic future depends not just on how economic systems work, but how people think about their economic situations and how they should work to improve their lives,” Rivlin said.

“People have deep emotions about health care because it affects their lives — they feel especially about losing access to the health care system,” she said.

She stressed the need for reasonable reform to help sustain the growing health care system.

She added that reform needs to be a constant re-evaluation of how health care is delivered and paid for.

Rivlin spoke in detail about President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, commenting on the polarized debate on the issue.

She said while some critics call the law extreme and unreasonable, the appropriate adjectives for it are “moderate” and “incremental.”

“The ACA is a complicated law,” she said.

“True criticism is that the administration did not do a good job of explaining it — its success will depend on how well it is implemented.”

She said the current political atmosphere lacks constructive bipartisan dialogue.

“We’re having a shouting match where people try to scare the public by accusing the other side of drastic change that will alter health care relationships,” she said.

“If they’d talk honestly about policy they actually favor, differences would narrow quickly, and they’d find a lot they could agree on.”

Sophomore Aneika Dickens said she was encouraged to attend the lecture by her public policy professors and because she had an interest in health care policy.

“The important thing is that we don’t need radical, but moderate change,” Dickens said.

Contact the desk editor at university@dailytarheel.com.