Dr. Tim Johnson, an ABC News medical correspondent, spoke to students Thursday about his new book, The Truth About Getting Sick in America, and the issues involved in the United States' current healthcare situation. The event was sponsored by the Health: Science, Society and Policy department and was held in the Rapaporte Treasure Hall. Johnson, a graduate of Albany Medical College, who also has a degree in public health from Harvard University, "is one of the nation's leading medical communicators in healthcare information" according to Danielle Sackstein '14, who organized the event.

Johnson, who has interviewed many notable people, including President Barack Obama, explained that through the presentation, he wanted to "reach out to the general public, in terms of thinking about health care reform in a way that might open their eyes to issues that they hadn't thought about in a particular way before." The presentation was organized in the same way as his book, with sections labeled "The Big Question", "The Big Problem," "The Big Fear," "The Big Sermon" and "The Big Prediction," and was accompanied by a PowerPoint.

In the first section of his presentation, entitled "The Big Question," Johnson proposed the question of why the United States spends twice as much per person for health care than do all other industrialized countries, yet is the only industrialized country that does not provide basic health care for all of its citizens. This question, he said, "should absolutely haunt us." Johnson noted that although the United States spends more per person, it does not have any better treatment results than other countries. He went on to compare five-year cancer survival rates from the United States and Canada, which showed that the two countries had about the same rates, to support his claim that U.S. extra expenditures are unjustifiable.

In the next part of his presentation, "The Big Problem," Johnson asserted that the most important cause the United States' "out of control health care costs...[is] the unrealistic expectations that we all have" as healthcare consumers. He said these expectations include convenient, compassionate, communicative, coordinated, cutting-edge and cheap or cost-free care. Johnson also went on to say that paying doctors, hospitals and drug and device companies more for providing more services, instead of paying them based on results, is responsible for driving up health care costs exponentially.

When beginning the portion of his presentation called "The Big Fear," Johnson stated that the fear is that the federal government will relegate the creation of medical care safety standards to states. Johnson said leaving the development of these standards to states would leave citizens to worry about the care they are receiving when they travel to other states, and added that this fear is especially relevant because of the Supreme Court discussions on health care that took place this week.

Johnson, a former minister, included a section named "The Big Sermon" that utilized the "Parable of the Good Samaritan" from the New Testament to illustrate his point that medical service should be based on need and not the possession of insurance.

Finally, his "Big Prediction" section introduced his forecast that "no [developed] country including the United States will be able to pay for everything for everyone at every age that modern medical science might [produce]."

Jonathan Steinberg '13, who attended the event, said that he thought it was "extremely eye-opening and put forth the ideas really simply, which is good for a lot of people to hear because everything gets muddled by the media and politics, and it is good to hear it from a good source who knows how to present it in the right way."