Perinatal Association, Houston Pediatric Society, Texas Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Harris County Medical Society, Houston Academy of Medicine, and Texas Children’s Hospital medical staff. His national leadership experience includes membership on the American Academy of Pediatrics Perina- tal Section, of which he served as chair from 2002 to 2004. As part of Dr. Speer’s neonatology practice, he works as the deputy chief of pediatrics at The Methodist Hospital, chief of the newborn and premature service at St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital, and professor of pediatrics and ethics at Baylor College of Medicine, where he graduated. In his nomination speech, Kenneth L. Mattox, MD, described Dr. Speer as an
“innovative strategist, exceptional listen- er, and loyal advocate who understands physicians’ issues.” Dr. Mattox praised Dr. Speer for his devotion to his patients and his attention to the best interests of practicing physicians.
In his acceptance speech, Dr. Speer
thanked the House of Delegates and the members of the Harris County Medical Society.
“Because of my broad practical experi- ence in medicine and proven leadership experience, I know the issues that we are facing. I live with these same issues. More importantly, I have the ideas and the determination to carry TMA through these challenging times so that we can emerge stronger and better than before,” he said. Dr. Speer will be sworn in as TMA’s
147th president next year at TexMed 2012 in Dallas.
Health reform law seriously flawed, policy analyst says
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a deeply flawed law that does nothing meaningful to reduce health care costs and includes surprisingly few new ideas for changing the model of health care delivery.
That’s the assessment of President
Barack Obama’s health care reform by a leading health industry analyst who spoke during the General Session at Tex- Med 2011 in Houston in May. “I am convinced that there were bur- ied in that 2,900 pages some noble aspi- rations, the noblest of which was to try and close what I think is an unsustain- able gap in coverage in our health care system and, by the way, create 30 mil- lion new customers for our physicians and hospitals,” said Jeff Goldsmith, PhD, president of Health Futures Inc. and a member of the editorial board of Health Affairs. But Dr. Goldsmith says the bill rep-
resents thousands of pages of “impen- etrable legislative language” that most closely resembles a blob fish, “a gelati- nous deep sea creature whose principal mechanism of biological defense is that no one wants to eat him.”
“I believe this was deeply flawed leg- islation,” said Dr. Goldsmith, who spoke about the future of medicine under health system reform.
He said the fact that 33 Republican governors are hostile to the law and 26 of those are suing to overturn it will
make it virtually impossible to have any kind of coherent state-federal coopera- tion in implementing the law. And, he added, Democratic propo-
nents of the bill delayed implementa- tions of many benefits under the law for more than three years from its passage and could end up delivering both houses of Congress to the Republicans. “From a tactical standpoint if you’re
going to do something this disruptive the absolute last thing you want to do is to wait three-and-a-half years before the voters actually realize any of the tangi- ble benefits,” Dr. Goldsmith said. “I don’t think the people who drafted this legis- lation had the faintest idea that the two election cycles that will elapse between signing it into law and people actually getting coverage from the bill will prob- ably deliver control over both houses of Congress to the other party.” Dr. Goldsmith said the country is still
in a recession, with more than 25 million people out of work, and ACA will further stymie any recovery. “The absolute last way you achieve economic growth is by reducing the after-tax return on capital and by mak-
Health care expert Jeff Goldsmith, PhD, told the audience at the TexMed 2011 General Session that the health system reform law is deeply flawed and does not really reduce health care costs.
July 2011 TEXAS MEDICINE 13
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