6: President Biden’s uphill task on US health care – with Dr David Blumenthal and Professor Ashish Jha

The Health Foundation podcast

The new Biden administration has a lot to deal with in the next four years: the US economy, the environment, public services and infrastructure, and healing America’s cultural and political divisions. Then there's health, inequalities and ensuring the US’s recovery from the pandemic.

On health and care alone there’s a long list of wrongs to right, and progress to make. The recent Lancet Commission report Public policy in the Trump era was searingly critical on President Trump’s legacy – not just in managing the pandemic, but in reversing progress on covering uninsured Americans, and much more.

But what can the Biden administration really do on health and health care? What will be its priorities? And what lessons might there be for us in the UK, as ideas so often seed from across the Atlantic?
In the latest episode of our podcast, Health Foundation Chief Executive Dr Jennifer Dixon discusses these issues with two US health policy experts:

• Dr David Blumenthal is President of the Commonwealth Fund, a Foundation based in New York that carries out independent research on health and social policy issues. He is a distinguished physician and academic, and amongst many other things has recently published the book Heart of power: Health and politics in the Oval Office.
• Professor Ashish Jha is currently Dean of the School of Public Health, and Professor of Health Services Policy and Practice, at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Ashish is on the frontline of the COVID-19 response, leading national and international analysis of key issues and advising state and federal policymakers.

Useful links:

• Listen to our interview with Sir Angus Deaton on why life expectancy stalling more in the US and UK compared to other OECD countries
• Listen to Jeremy Hunt's interview about the role of the health secretary in the UK in our first podcast episode
• Find out more about the Health Foundation podcast