All are welcome to attend this debate concerning the pros and cons of single payer healthcare.
MODERATOR: Dr. Oscar Marcilla, MD – Debate Moderator (Associate Director Emergency Medicine at Flushing Hospital Medical Center)
Arguing PRO Single Payer Healthcare:
Leonard Rodberg, PhD, is Professor and Chair of Urban Studies at Queens College/CUNY. He holds a PhD in Physics received from MIT in 1957. Along with his late wife, Joanne Lukomnik, he was one of the founders of Physicians for a National Health Program. He began his professional life as a nuclear physicist, but he has strayed far afield. Dr. Rodberg has served as Director of the Science Policy Office in the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and Resident Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC and has been involved in the struggle for health care reform since 1974, when he led the development of the Dellums Health Service Act. He has served on the Board of the NY Metro Chapter of PNHP for a number of years and is Treasurer and Research Director of the Chapter. He also created and directs the Infoshare Community Data web site (www.infoshare.org).
Elizabeth Rosenthal, MD recently retired from her Mamaroneck practice of dermatology after 35 years. She continues on the clinical faculty of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. For the past 5 years she has been an active Board member of the NY Metro chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program. Speaking and writing on health care reform for the past several years, she is a passionate advocate of an expanded and improved “Medicare for All.” She is a graduate of Smith College and NYU Medical School and is a Diplomate of the American Board of Dermatology. She lives in Larchmont with her physician husband, and they are the parents of three grown sons.
Arguing AGAINST Single Payer Healthcare:
Sameer Lakha, MD, PGY-2 Anesthesiology, Mt. Sinai. Dr. Lakha is an anesthesiology resident at The Mount Sinai Hospital, and founder and past president of the BRI-Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai chapter. He graduated from Harvard with a BA cum laude in Economics, and received his MD with Distinction in Research from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, where he was also elected to the membership of Alpha Omega Alpha. He has written and spoken on a variety of health policy topics for Benjamin Rush Institute. As a Canadian, Dr. Lakha has had firsthand experience living in a country where single-payer healthcare is a reality.
Raymond Raad, MD MPH is a general and forensic psychiatrist in private practice in Manhattan. He received his MD from the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons and his MPH in health policy from the Columbia Mailman School of Public Health, and then completed a residency in Psychiatry at the Weill Cornell Medical Center. He has an interest in health policy, in particular in international comparison of health and medical systems. He is co-author of Bending the Productivity Curve: Why America Leads the World in Medical Innovation. http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/bending-productivity-curve-why-america-leads-world-medical-innovation