Juxtaposed Panels: Healthcare Future & Reproductive Health

Healthcare business people and women's rights scholars talk about recent events.. Audio coming soon!

 By: Megan Antonetti-Elford 

I was crunched for time last Thursday evening but speed-walked across campus to catch two overlapping panel discussions on two different, but overlapping subjects.

 
1. 5pm - Managing Uncertainty in the Future Healthcare Environment put on by the MBA Healthcare association as part of the McCombs Health Care Symposium at the plush AT&T Conference Center

2. 6pm - The Texas Observer and The Center for Women’s & Gender Studies jointly-hosted “Politics Becomes Personal” panel in Burdine 106.  


Here's a table of highlights of the panels:

Managing Uncertainty...		Politics Becomes Personal
	setting
professional, too many water glasses for the amount of guests and panelists, chattering  people breezing in and out		dank, vacant, (I took a physics exam here once), panelists sitting on each-others laps at a folding table
	MC
young president of the MBA healthcare association - Jim Ryan		englishwoman director of Center for Women’s and Gender Studies - Sue Heinzelman
	what brought them there
things are changing because of affordable care act, changes in health care delivery and electronic information but we don’t know how		how we came to see broad attacks on women’s health and reproductive rights and how we can respond
	readability
tough - full of acronyms I still couldn’t decipher even after looking them up		a breeze - facts and numbers provided by Kristine Hopkins of the Population Research Center at UT and Sarah Wheat
	emotional appeal
Katherine Henderson’s pledge that, based on their mission statement, Seton Health Centers will continue to provide care regardless of a patients’ ability to pay of the outcome of the Supreme Court Decision on the Affordable Care Act.		Caroline Jones’s post-sonogram law experience will break your heart
	audience
Dr. McDaniels big-shot in McCombs school, healthcare salespeople - people who know what the acronyms mean		aging activists accusing young people of not paying attention, surprising amount of young men, bloggers
	similes
health care reform is “..like asking me to redesign a nuclear reactor, it's just not gonna come out well.” - Thomas W. Knight, MD St. David’s Chief Medical Officer		political use of the term “informed consent” in defense of the sonogram law is like “.. calling something the clean skies act when in fact it is a permission to pollute.” -Sarah Wheat, Interim Co-CEO of Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas
	what I think I learned
the health care industry is open to changes, aware of alternative models, and humbled by the inefficiency of the current system. As Ben Gawiser, VP of health software developer Advisory Board Company pointed out, they need more data and strategies to reduce costs.  And I think, curbing greed would help too.		As Christen Smith, UT Department of Anthropology chair put it, “lawmakers are using women’s bodies as a political playing field.” And I think voting (more people voting), not rallying or paneling, will be what puts an end to it.