UCSF Students Pack Classroom to Learn About Health Care Reform

More than 80 students attended the standing-room-only lecture led by Laura Schmidt, Co-Director of UCSF’s Clinical and Translational Research Institute’s (CTSI) Community Engagement and Health Policy Program, who kicked off the course on Sept. 21 with an overview of U.S. health care and past reform efforts. Second-year medical student Jeff Doyon had a hunch that his health care reform elective might get some interest from fellow classmates, but he didn’t anticipate a line stretching out the door on its first day. A year after the passage of the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, students at UCSF are showing up in large numbers to learn about the landmark legislation two years before they were scheduled to learn about it. Signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010, the act reforms certain aspects of the private health insurance industry and public health insurance programs, including increasing insurance coverage of pre-existing conditions, expanding access to insurance to more than 30 million Americans and mandating an increase in total national medical expenditure. “Reform is on everyone’s mind here,” Doyon said. “We are just starting our medical training and want to know how it’s going to affect our approach to providing care.” Read on
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