Health & Veritas Ruth Katz: Crafting Landmark Legislation
May 16, 2024
In this engaging discussion, Ruth Katz, the Executive Director of the Aspen Institute's Health, Medicine & Society Program and a key figure behind the Affordable Care Act, shares insights from her influential career. She reflects on landmark legislation that shaped healthcare policy, including the origins of the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. The conversation highlights the risks of underregulated stem cell treatments and contrasts past bipartisan efforts with today's polarized landscape. Katz's perspectives illuminate the importance of crafting impactful health legislation.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Analysis Choices Drive Conflicting Results
- Different defensible analytic choices can produce widely varying results from the same dataset.
- Harlan Krumholz highlights that reproducibility requires reporting many specifications, not just the headline one.
Red Meat Findings Depend On Specification
- The red meat study applied 1,208 defensible analytic specifications and found mixed directions of effect.
- Most specifications were non-significant, so the overall evidence for harm was weak according to Harlan.
Legislation Framed On Her Office Wall
- Ruth Katz has framed red-line prints of the Affordable Care Act and a 1993 NIH authorization in her office.
- She says these pieces represent once-in-a-generation legislative work she helped craft on Capitol Hill.