Keeping Healthcare Alive in the Public Sphere

As the current healthcare debate continues a key question that we at TuftScope have discussed is what happens after the legislation is passed. Climate regulatory legislation, international affairs, and others vital national and domestic issues are likely to replace healthcare as leading topics. But the issue will unlikely to disappear from the policy spectrum when the current legislation is made into law. In fact, it will likely take decades to fully realize the potential of the reform legislation and perhaps as much time to resolve the new problems that will arise.

Between 1994 and 2009 fifteen years passed (not including Medicare Part D, which was a fiscal calamity) before serious systemic reform was considered by the Congress and the public. The quintessential issue at hand is how we can insure that healthcare remains visible to the general public, and for TuftScope the undergraduate community. In a recent Tufts Daily article, former Editor in Chief Cole Archambault note that "Since all Tufts students are required by Massachusetts law to have health insurance, I doubt any reforms currently proposed would affect the average Tufts student." Because students already have health insurance and are a relatively healthy group to begin with, healthcare issues are invisible to them.

So then our challenge is to make healthcare as relevant and interesting to general public as it is right now. We have several initiatives in the works to address this, but continue to seek input from the general community as to how we can improve our coverage of healthcare policy, global health, biomedicine, and campus health. If you would like to share your thoughts, please send them to TuftScope@Gmail.com.

Michael Shusterman is the Editor in Chief of TuftScope (2009 - 2010).