Harold Pollack is the Helen Ross Professor at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration, affiliate professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences, nonresident fellow of the Century Foundation, and codirector of the University of Chicago Crime Lab. He received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University. He holds master's and doctorate degrees in public policy from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University. Pollack's public health policy research has been published in the American Journal of Public Health, Social Service Review, JAMA, and many other peer-review publications. His writings have also appeared in the Washington Post, the Nation, the New York Times, the New Republic, and American Prospect. Pollack has been appointed to three committees of the National Academy of Sciences.
Harold Pollack; Medicare for All — if It Were Politically Possible — would Necessarily Replicate the Defects of Our Current System. J Health Polit Policy Law 1 August 2015; 40 (4): 923–931. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/03616878-3150172
Medicare for All, ideally implemented, could offer powerful advantages over our current health care financial system. Unfortunately, the political obstacles to such a system are formidable and are likely to remain so for decades. More to the point, a politically viable single-payer system would not replace our currently dysfunctional health care politics. It would be a product of that same legislative process and political economy and thus be disfigured by the same interest group politics, path dependence, and fragmentation that Laurence Seidman rightly laments.
