Former White House officer says health care should mirror market

Students filled Teachers College Room 101 on Tuesday night to hear a former White House official's views on health care reform.

James Capretta, former associate director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, spoke with students from majors including those from the economics department, the Miller College of Business and the political science department as part of the MCOB Neil Palomba Lecture Series. He talked about the health care reform bill, his opinions of the bill and its possible effects.

"Price controls always have one effect and that is that they drive willing providers out," Capretta said. "If you are going to pay less for a service, people who otherwise would have provided the service are going to say, ‘I'm not providing it at that lower rate.' That happens in a lot of different ways: people just don't enter into a profession; they close down a clinic; they shut off hours; they do things that restrict supply."

Capretta said he believed in a "market-based approach" to health care, where citizens were able to choose where they get their insurance and what type of insurance they want. He said this approach could solve many budget and expense problems.

"It is not easy to do, though. It involves controversy," Capretta said. "The problem is that it involves all of us because we have to take the risk. Instead of getting an open-ended federal commitment that they are going to take care of us, they would have to give us something more limited. You have to decide how to make that work for you."

A self-proclaimed "budget guy," Capretta is a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he studies a number of public-policy issues with a focus on health care.

The plan to bring Capretta to Ball State began two months ago, Gamma Delta Pi President Joshua Hofstetter said.

Hofstetter said he hopes students who came to hear the speaker will take away a better understanding of health care and be more realistic about it.

"It isn't a grand, cure-all bill," Hofstetter said. "There are still problems with it, and it could cause more problems. That's something that we all need to realize and hopefully be able to find solutions for in the future."


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