Stuart Altman, Dean for the Heller School of Social Policy and Management is a short man who somehow gives off an air of importance without seeming to realize how powerful he truly is. He dresses well, and his manner is warm and friendly. His voice is quiet, and when he talks, even about the complexities of health care, it feels like he's telling a bedtime story. Mention the name Michael Moore, however, and you've got something else coming.

Altman, who has spent his life working to alleviate the American health care crisis, is infuriated by Moore's latest movie, Sicko.

"Well, for a while, I thought it amused me," he says. "But then I began to get really ticked off."

Even though Altman turns a light shade of purple when he says this, it's hard to not smile a little when he says the words ticked off. It just comes as a surprise.

Altman, who has met with hundreds of people about health care throughout his life-from doctors to heads of hospitals, from presidents to senators-is used to butting heads with people who don't agree with his solution.

But Moore, Altman says, is a different story.

According to Altman, Moore's film, which attempted to expose the American health care system as a corporate, self-indulgent moneymaking machine, presented information that is no longer true about health care in America today.

"We do have problems, and we need to deal with them. And he identified some of them," Altman says. "But he made it so simple that if we just had an all-government system, all our problems would go away. And that's just pure, unmitigated nonsense."

Along with oversimplifying the problem, Altman complains that Moore provided misinformation about health care in other countries and was especially upset about the part in the movie in which Moore takes some Americans to Cuba to be treated for various medical problems.

"He made it seem like, you know, in France, England and Canada, everybody is just happy and everything is wonderful, which is just not true," he says. "Cuba has one MRI machine, so you know, [Moore] brought them to the one hospital that has an MRI machine, and these people got care. It's just nonsense, pure nonsense. So, at the end of the day, I got really ticked off."

Still, Altman thinks that the movie was beneficial because it brought the problem of American health care to the forefront of American minds and says that he will show the film to his undergraduate class as soon as it comes out on DVD.

Altman's plan for health care is what he calls "government-supported, high-cost re-insurance." Currently, private health insurance companies often charge very high premiums to their customers in order to protect themselves from the eventuality that their customers will get very sick and have high health care costs. What Altman suggests is that the federal government should help pay some of these higher costs for people in need, therefore helping more people afford health care.

Altman, unlike some in the health care world, does not want to rebuild American health care; he simply wants to change it.

"I don't think America just totally destroys its institutions," he says, "and I think this can be fixed."

There are three main issues Altman says he has with health care today. His job, he says, is to find a way that more Americans can be covered, to reduce the rate of spending on health care and to improve the overall quality of health care.

Altman says that it is always a battle in the political world to figure out which of these three issues to deal with first, but he clearly thinks that the nation's priority should be to have universal insurance before worrying about how much it should cost.

"I think it's unfair," he says. "I don't know why we should have the uninsured as hostage to the fact that we can't control cost for our own, for those of





us who have good coverage."

Altman has been trying to solve the American health care problem since the 1970s when he started working with President Richard Nixon-the first of a string of politicians to employ him.

Altman has worked for former President Bill Clinton, Sen. John Kerry and most recently has helped out presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama.

"I was very impressed with him," Altman says of Obama. "I went to a fundraiser for him downtown, and [my friend] introduced me, and he said, 'Oh yeah, I know who you are, and I'd love to get you more involved with my campaign,' and I said, 'Fine.'"

Altman seems unimpressed with national recognition. He speaks as if it were no big deal that a presidential candidate already knew who he was.

But when Altman mentions that the senator knew the details of his health care solution, his eyes light up just a little bit, and he speaks just a little bit faster.

Despite having worked for and befriended Clinton, Altman is not worried that his work for the Obama campaign will have a detrimental effect on his relationship with the Clinton family.

"[Sen. Hillary Clinton] hasn't called me," he admits, "but I do know her principle health advisor, and we stay close, and the argument is this: You know, I'm in favor of any of the Democratic candidates . at our level, I hope our relations are not hurt. I haven't heard anything yet. I think that at the end of the day there's going to need to be a bringing together of forces [from the Obama and Clinton campaigns]. And right now, it's a little heated, but you know it will happen."

In 2004, Altman was named the 46th most influential man in American health care by Modern Healthcare, the nation's leading health care business publication, but he doesn't let the title define him.

"If they say it, they must be true," he says. "But listen, there are thousands of people involved; you can only do what you can do."

And what Altman can do, and does, is inform people in and out of the classroom setting in an effort to make a difference.

Margot Moinester '09, a Health: Science, Society, and Policy major, is in Altman's American health care course and says the timing of the class is perfect.

"I took it now because I really wanted to learn about health care before the election," she says. "It's a really exciting class, and especially because of the current political climate, it's nice to be with someone who's currently at the forefront of the political field, and he has really entertaining stories about his political involvement with health care."

Altman knows that outside of the classroom, he has a lot of work left to do and that he faces a daunting task.

"Well, I want to say it can be fixed, but that doesn't mean that it will," he says. "History is not on our side; there are lots of people who say that you can do two out of three, but you can't do three out of three. But you never know; maybe you can do three out of three, and that's what we're trying to figure out.