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Feel no pity for the Harvard professors when it comes to health care

 Dan K. Thomasson

By Dan K. Thomasson

Published Jan. 13, 2015

#&^@! What have I done!?

Pity the poor Harvard professor. When it comes to health care they’re going to be just like the rest of us.

The oldest institution of higher learning in America is having to tighten its belt at the expense of its faculty because of Obamacare or more properly the Affordable Care Act. The school’s powers that be, it seems, have decided that the generosity it has long shown in paying for health benefits for its renowned teachers will have to be curtailed because of growing costs brought about by provisions in the president’s chief initiative. They, the professors, simply must contribute more.

And guess what? They don’t like it one bit despite the fact many of them were outspokenly in favor of the very act that is now causing them financial pain. Some even provided their expertise during its drafting. There was a faculty vote against it but not in time for immediate relief.

The 2015 Harvard health care enrollment guide said the university must respond “to the national trend of rising health care costs, some being driven by health care reform,” i.e. the ACA. Provisions singled out were those that kept the kids on their parents’ insurance until 26, provide preventive services, colonoscopies, mammograms and so forth and tax the highest cost insurance — the so called Cadillac plans.

So now it seems the school’s employees will face, as do many Americans, a (shudder) deductible and a share of the costs for coinsurance for hospitalization, surgery and specified tests. Up until now they have been shelling out for a portion of insurance premiums and had very low out of pocket costs at the time of service.

If this could happen at Harvard with a $36 Billion bank account that matches any number of small state treasuries around the world, what’s next for its “elite” brethren.

At ancient Harvard is there a note of hypocrisy in the bleating of academia? Of course there is. But that’s hardly unusual in intellectual utopias where deep dish thinkers hatch plans they never meant for themselves or even in Congress for that matter where bills often include language that exempts its members from whatever is being imposed on the rest of us. It’s what can happen when Congress ignores the fact a majority of Americans oppose radical reforms.

A long term professor cited by the New York Times challenged the new out of pocket costs being imposed as a detriment to good health stating that it could lead people to defer medical care or diagnostic tests causing more serious illnesses and costly complications. He was quoted by the Times as saying it was the equivalent of taxing the sick.

While some of the institution’s employees have said they would accept a narrower network of health care providers if it would lower their costs, an idea that other consumers have complained restricts their choice of doctors and hospitals, Harvard has a major problem with that. As the Times correctly pointed out, some of the most highly rated and most expensive hospitals in Boston are affiliated with the school.

Opponents question why Harvard is doing this doing this considering its vast resources.

The schools president, Drew Gilpin Faust, tried to answer the increasingly acrimonious debate by saying that while the changes were “causing distress” and had “generated anxiety” health benefit costs were growing faster than operating revenues to a point they were threatening the budget for other priorities like teaching and student age.

Critics, however, did their own research and concluded that the institution’s health costs were not accelerating as much as the university claimed.

Who’s right? Who knows? But many of those objecting are now being asked to put their money where their mouths were when they supported the general idea of tearing up 18 percent of the economy with sweeping health reforms. The university’s lower paid employees are going to be hurt by all this and they were among the all millions of alleged benefactors of the ACA, which by the way doesn’t seem to be as affordable as everyone would like.

And it is why there still is considerable support among Americans who believe it should be repealed. Republicans may or may not succeed in doing that with the new Congress they now control. It would be ironic if the Harvard geniuses suddenly found themselves on the side of the GOP.

Dan Thomasson
(TNS)

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Dan Thomasson is an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service and a former vice president of Scripps Howard Newspapers.

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